Two Degrees of Separation
by Helen West
Summary: Heyes returns to New York to try to live out his dream of attending college, but his past threatens to end far more than his academic career. This story follows Hannibal Heyes Goes to New York, which follows Not Again! You really need to read both first. The Kid appears some. Sorry for slower posting.
1. Chapter 1

This story follows _Hannibal Heyes Goes to New York_, or actually partially overlaps it. And HH to NY follows _Not Again!_ You just have to read both of those stories first for this story to make any sense at all. This story gets in all kinds of things – drama, romance, hurt-comfort, and even some comedy. The beginning of this story is set about three years after the pilot and about one year after _Not Again!_ The narrative concentrates on Heyes, but the Kid gets plenty of action. While this is about Heyes' years in college, don't expect an academic story! Far from it! A lot of it isn't even set in New York, much less the classroom. As Heyes' long-suffering advisor is heard to complain, "How are we ever going to get you graduated if you insist on running around playing cowboys and Indians all the time?"

Again, I must apologize for the use for my own purposes of characters I didn't invent. And I must also apologize for manipulation of the symptoms of Aphasia, a very real and very serious condition, for purely fictional purposes. I have given poor Heyes Aphasia after a bullet wound to the head. Also, to paraphrase what Dorothy Sayers said of Peter Wimsey and Balliol College, Oxford, I must lastly apologize for saddling Columbia University with so wayward an alumnus as Hannibal Heyes.

Again, I dedicate this story to the teachers among our readers. By now I hope the reasons are obvious. I would also like to dedicate it to second cousins. Although my two beloved second cousins will never read this or know about it, they are both wonderful men who are as much geniuses as Heyes and as faithful relations as the Kid.

[This story starts about six months before the end of HH Goes to NY.] Heyes had enjoyed his time in Colorado visiting with the Kid and Cat at the end of June, but it also been emotionally exhausting. He found it very difficult to have to explain his current situation to his closest friends, even while suffering from it. If also tortured him to have them see him, and worry about him so much, while he was in a state that he regarded as very much a work in progress. He hoped to have a much better ability to speak and to write very soon and hated to the Kid and Cat think of him as a permanent verbal cripple. He knew that they might be right about that, but he was eagerly planning on surprising them with his progress by Christmas. Of course readers of the last story know that Heyes was exactly right about that.

So Heyes in the summer returning from Colorado was eager to get back to his therapy and his studies at the Leutze Clinic in New York. When Heyes came back to New York City, he was still battling the gaps and interruptions in his speech and the profound limitations in his practical vocabulary. But he could start to see progress and he could hardly guess where it might take him.

One hot summer afternoon Miss Warren and Joshua Smith sat in Beth Warren's airless office together, fanning themselves with makeshift paper fans and wishing air conditioning had been invented by then. The tutor told her top student that she was going to be taking a geometry class at Columbia University in the fall. "You see, as a teacher, I have to keep up my qualifications. A couple of degrees are never enough. Besides, with you as a student, I need to be at my best." She winked at him playfully and he smiled, because he knew that it was true. He was always asking to know more than Beth, even with her BA and MA, knew. "But I was thinking maybe you might like to sit in with the class I'll be taking."

"Sit in?" asked Heyes. He was still wrestling with his speech, but those two syllables he could manage just fine.

Beth explained, "Yes. It's just what it sounds like. You just come to class, listen, and watch. You don't have to do the reading or the home work, if you don't want to or don't have time. You just do as much as you want. You could take quizzes or tests if you wanted to, to find out if you understand the material, but you wouldn't have to. And the results wouldn't count on your academic record- if you ever have an academic record. It's a kind of dry run, you might say. Professor Homer is teaching the class – the man who looked at your formulas that Dr. Leutze sent when he was working with you in Colorado. I'm sure he'd like to meet you. He's said so. Have you ever been interested in college?"

"Have I? Always! What's it cost?" Heyes was excited but also very unsure. Would the class be so far over his head that it would prove to him that he couldn't do math at this level? And how would eastern college boys treat a westerner who couldn't even talk properly?

Miss Warren smiled at her student's enthusiasm. She wondered how a cowboy plus, as she thought of Joshua, had come to aspire to a college education. But she thought he was up to it. "It doesn't cost anything to sit in. As long as they have enough desks and the professor gives his permission, you can come for free. As I said, you couldn't claim credit on your academic record. But equally, if you struggled, as you would have every right to do without the preparation and background all the other students would have, no one would ever need to know that – except you. It would be just an experiment, a pure learning experience. You get to see what college is like and decide if you might, possibly, be interested in the real thing. No cost but some time. What about it? Shall we ask Professor Homer?" Heyes looked at Beth in amazement. He couldn't escape her implication that not just sitting in but actual college classes might be in his future. He had never thought he ever would, ever could, really attend college. That Miss Warren would think it was even the most distant possibility was a total shock to the former outlaw.

Heyes had dreamed about college ever since he had heard the word. The idea of a place where he could learn anything he wanted, at the highest level, was like a view into heaven. Heyes had met very few college men out west. None of his teachers had ever gone to college. But the minister in his family church when he was very young was an alumnus of Rutgers, in New Jersey. The man had impressed the young Hannibal with his knowledge and his wisdom. And Heyes had known a lawyer or two with college training – though those meetings were in less than favorable circumstances. John Robertson, the former teacher who had ridden with one of Heyes' gangs for a while, had taken some college classes. He was the one who had told Heyes about what it was like to go to college and what men with college degrees could do. That had lit the fire in Heyes, but he had damped it down and entertained no hope. What could be more ridiculous and unlikely than a western outlaw attending college? After all, in those days attending college was still rare and considered elite and expensive.

But now, Heyes was starting to get an idea of what college could really mean. Beth Warren, who had earned not only a BA but an MA as well, was a model of what a college-educated person was like. And, of course, so were his doctors, Dr. Leutze and Dr. Goldstein. But Heyes didn't underestimate the many, many barriers that still stood between him and any possibility of his going to college. He couldn't even talk properly yet, if he ever would! And even he knew that real college classes were far from free. And far from easy.

One hot July New York late afternoon Miss Warren and Heyes had taken a cab to Columbia University. The semester hadn't started yet, so the elaborate red brick building where Professor Homer had his office was nearly empty, although of course the New York City streets outside were never deserted, day or night.

Professor Homer, a tall, lean, graying man with a pronounced western accent, was waiting for them in his office. He sat behind his desk in his shirt sleeves. It was simply too hot to wear a jacket indoors in the New York summer. "Good morning, Miss Warren. So this is the dodecahedron man? Glad to meet you, Smith!" Joshua shook hands with the professor and gratefully removed his own jacket. Heyes felt shy of this man who was at the top of the field of mathematics where the former outlaw had happily but unprofessionally played since he was a child. "I understand that you're interested in sitting in with a geometry class?"

"Yes, P . . . sir. If you have space." Heyes said awkwardly. His speech was still slow and halting and the word professor was beyond him. He had tried to get the word prepared for this visit, but it hadn't worked out well. "Miss Warren said maybe?"

"Where are you from, Smith?" asked the professor, looking curiously at his potential sit in. He heard something familiar in Smith's accent. "You're not from Wyoming, my home territory, by any chance, are you?"

"No, sir. I'm from . . . Kansas. But I . . . spent time in . . . W . . . Wyoming." Heyes inwardly thought that he would still have to be very lucky to avoid doing time in Wyoming. Heyes couldn't deny his connections to Wyoming to anyone who would recognize the accent, but he sure wasn't eager to have anyone thinking very much about his time in that territory where the Devil's Hole Gang was headquartered. He wanted to get back to school topics as quickly as possible. "I can't talk much yet. Would that hurt?"

"No, Smith. If you can understand and read, that will be enough. And if you want to take exams, of course you will need to write." Professor Homer was well familiar with Smith's problems, having spoken to Miss Warren about him. "Talking's no problem. Some of the students might ride you, but you can cope with that. You just listen and read and you'll be fine – just as long as you can manage the math itself. Sounds to me like you're making great progress with talking!"

"Thank you!" Heyes felt glad, once again, to have that useful phrase at his command.

Professor Homer was curious about this potential student. "Miss Warren tells me that you didn't finish school when you were growing up, but that while working with her you're almost finished the grades you missed. Do you anticipate finishing you math studies to 11th grade level in time for next semester?"

"Yes, sir. I should." Heyes felt peculiar as it occurred to him what rapid progress he had really been making. He wondered if he could possibly keep it up. With all the talk of his being a genius, he had never really taken it seriously. Now he might have a chance to find out how true it was. What if he was just a decently bright guy who couldn't make it past high school level math? And he had a long way to go to catch up in the areas outside of math.

Miss Warren took up the story to save her student from having to stumble through it. "Mr. Smith tells me that he studied informally some more advanced mathematics with a former teacher about twelve years ago, while he was out west. I guess he was working as a cowboy, among other things. He learned some fairly advanced algebra. He's been demonstrating that, and an excellent grasp of geometry. Truly, he does outstanding work for a man with so little formal academic background. He might not have the prerequisites for your class officially, but I think he should be able to follow it, if he works hard at it. And he has an exemplary work ethic."

"Wait, you studied math while you were working cattle?" Smith nodded and shrugged, grinning with embarrassment. Professor Homer was puzzled by the mental picture. With his own western background, he understood how strange this was. "Well, I guess I've heard odder things. I know a cowboy poet in Montana. So why not a cowboy mathematician? You're welcome to sit in, Smith. There are plenty of seats. I look forward to seeing you in class."

The two men shook hands once more. There were a lot of differences between the tall, gray professor [dare I suggest that that you envision an aging Indiana Jones here?] and the younger former cowboy (so far as Beth Warren knew) who had had so little schooling until recently. But to Miss Warren's very interested eye, they also had many things in common. Both exuded a rugged air of independence Beth associated with the West – and that she found very impressive and appealing. She could picture Professor Homer in a cowboy hat and boots about as readily as she could picture Joshua Smith in the same garb. But would Joshua Smith ever be as at home in a classroom as his new professor was?


	2. Chapter 2

On the first of September, when Hannibal Heyes arrived at Columbia University in New York City to sit in with his first college class, he had felt as if every eye on campus was fixed on him. Since he was using his regular alias, Joshua Smith, his fellow students sure didn't know that he was a reformed western outlaw. There were more than enough unusual things about the new sit-in to attract gawkers without that!

To begin with, Heyes was not a regular student, so he knew only one of his classmates – his tutor, Elizabeth Warren. She was a plump, brisk woman in her early thirties who knew many of the students. She had a habit of taking college classes even after having completed her MA. Heyes, or Smith, as everyone knew him, was just sitting in for free to try out the experience of college. Heyes came to that first class following in the wake of his tutor. Heyes, at more than 5 feet 10, was not a large man but he towered over the petite tutor who led the way toward the classroom. This wasn't an entrance calculated to impress anyone or to pass unnoticed by a bunch of competitive young men. They always kept an eye on anyone new.

Heyes, handsome but anxious in his best new suit, was slicked up in a vain attempt to fit in with the city college students around him. Despite his efforts to look casual, Heyes couldn't help feeling that his country manners were still obvious to everyone around him. Heyes found a crowd of citified students waiting in front of the classroom on this first day. There were about twenty-four students, all of them men. Most were fresh-faced youths between eighteen and twenty-one years old - much younger than Heyes' own thirty-three years. They looked very much at home in the elegant gothic hall in front of their classroom. The young men leaned on the walls or perched on the step from the lower floor as they noisily caught up on the gossip with their friends whom they hadn't seen since the previous May.

The crowd of young students quieted down as Miss Warren and Heyes approached. The former outlaw could feel them staring at him, and he fought against openly staring back. He felt as if they could clearly see his lack of academic background and that they could somehow detect traces of the colorful history that separated the new man from the rest of the class. Heyes self-consciously swiped his hand through the long, dark hair on his left temple, where the ugly scar from his bullet wound was still all too visible.

"Neal," said Miss Warren to the one student who looked older than herself and Heyes, "I'd like you to meet my friend, Joshua Smith. He's going to sit in this semester to see how he likes college classes. Joshua, this is Neal George. I met him in a math class last year."

Neal, a tall, thin, dark-haired man whom Heyes judged to be about forty – easily the oldest in the class - gladly shook the new man's hand. "Welcome to Columbia, Smith!" he said warmly. "I hope you'll have a good semester."

"Thank you!" said Heyes, trying to sound natural. "You, too!" But his speech was still slow, with a slight but noticeable pause before each word. He knew that he sounded as if his brain was as slow as his tongue. Heyes could feel George looking at him quizzically and other students snuck surreptitious glances at the new man.

"You study with Beth at the clinic, Smith?" asked George. He obviously knew where Elizabeth Warren worked and what kind of people she worked with – he recognized the slow speech of someone struggling to recover the use of language.

"Yeah. I - I've been at the clinic a year now. Miss Warren's great." Heyes strove mightily to make casual conversation, and speak good English, and speak at a normal speed, but he couldn't quite manage all three at once.

"Mr. Smith is excellent in math, and particularly in geometry, so we thought this would be a good class for him to try, in case he might want to enroll later." Miss Warren said, with some pride in her student.

"Oh? I'm a math major myself. Always glad to have another numbers guy along." Neal seemed genuinely pleased to welcome the new western student, who was, after all, the only man within ten years of his own age.

Heyes felt a bit embarrassed by Miss Warren's boast about his abilities and hastened to lower his new acquaintance's expectations. "Don't expect too much – I never . . . finished school out west. Not even close."

"Well, you've finished it now. You are ready for this, you know you are!" said Miss Warren encouragingly. Joshua felt like crawling under a rock to hide – he liked Beth a lot, but he didn't need cheering on in public! He was relieved when his teacher excused herself to go greet some other students she knew, leaving Joshua and Neal to visit.

"You must be good for Beth to bring you here. What did you do before you came to the clinic?" asked Neal. Seeing that Joshua needed a moment to prepare his answer to this question, Neal volunteered some information about himself, "I work for a printer, as you can see. It's just impossible to get rid of the ink stains. If I can get my degree, I hope I can get out of the press room!" He rubbed self-consciously at his finger nails, which were, indeed, all stained back with ink.

Heyes wasn't sure how to tell anyone from the East about his life before he had come to New York. This required a complex answer that would hide most of the truth while ringing true enough that someone could talk to Joshua Smith all semester without uncovering any inconsistency, so Heyes' words were even slower than usual. "Oh, the usual stuff – ranch work, cow punching, dealing cards, body guarding, gold mining, was a deputy once. Just a saddle bum. Lowest form of western life." Bank and train robbing, of course, were not mentioned!

Neal's eyes got bigger the longer Smith's list went on. "That's usual out west? Not here! You're a cowboy? And a sheriff's deputy? I never met a cowboy before, much less a sheriff's deputy!" It was Jim Smith's hero-worshipping reaction all over again, but now there were more than twenty students barely covering the fact that they were listening in to this fascinating conservation and sneaking glances at the western curiosity who had come among them.

Neal went on, "I'm just from Philadelphia myself, so that all sounds awfully exotic to me. And exciting compared to setting type!"

At this point Professor Homer arrived, mercifully from Heyes' point of view. The tall, graying western professor said, "'Morning, Smith," as he passed by, knowing that his own acceptance might make life easier for the new sit in. Heyes was careful not to sit next to Beth Warren, although his connection to her was now known to all. Heyes was just glad to have another friend in class, who was a man relatively close to his own age and who had obviously come to academic life by nearly as unusual a route as Heyes had.

Joshua stayed silent in classes for the first few weeks, just drinking in all the new information. He read and solved the assignments and took the quizzes, just so he could see if he was understanding the material. Almost unfailingly, he was. He watched and listened to everything around Columbia University with rigorous attention. He was learning not only about geometry, but about the routines of college life. He learned new slang vocabulary like "dorm" and "frat." He found out that the familiar word "ace" he knew only from cards was also a verb that he hoped to accomplish himself one day – to earn a grade of A. The new information only fed Heyes' ambitions to return to this, or another, campus to take classes for credit. There were a lot of barriers – his lack of a traditional academic background, financial problems, his remaining problems with speaking. But maybe he could somehow get past all that.

The rest of the students tended to ignore Joshua Smith, who wasn't part of their competitive academic world. But one day he began to get their attention. Professor Homer had drawn a complex shape on the board along with a complex equation not quite like anything he had posed for them before. He set the class to solving for X. Minutes passed while students, including Heyes, struggled, writing and erasing and writing and erasing on their papers. Finally, most of them stopped writing.

"OK, class. Who has the solution?" asked Homer. Dead silence fell. "What, no one has it?"

A usually showoff tall blonde boy put up his hand tentatively. He sounded more like he was asking a question than answering one as he volunteered, far more quietly than usual, "Five hundred and thirty six?"

Professor Homer shook his head. "Not quite, Clarkesdale. Actually, not even close. Anyone else?"

For the first time, Smith put up his hand. In fact, it was the first time Hannibal Heyes had put up his hand in any classroom in 18 years. The last time he had been in a class and could have done so, some of these students hadn't even been born. Visibly surprised, Homer said, "Smith?"

With painful self-consciousness, Heyes said, slowly but clearly, "Thirteen to the 3rd power." Nearly the whole class laughed openly at the slow, hesitant speech in a western accent most had never heard before. They couldn't believe that his answer could be anything other than lamely wrong. Heyes kept his eyes trained straight ahead on the professor, refusing to acknowledge the laughter, and praying that his answer was close.

Professor Homer stared at his sit-in in open surprise for a moment before he responded. "Smith, that problem was designed to show that you need a whole chapter of additional information before even attempting this kind of a problem. Yet you solved it anyway. You are precisely correct! Excellent work!" Murmurs broke out all around the classroom. The western guy could do math! Heyes permitted himself the tiniest smile. Humiliation had turned to triumph – at least for the moment. His habit of not only reading ahead but practicing the material before the class reached it had paid off. As Professor Homer explained the new concept, Heyes paid particular attention not only to the content of the lecture, but to the way the professor got the material across and the examples he used. The sit-in had been thinking about how he, could he speak that well, would have explained it to a class. He wished he could know how well his own slightly different approach would have worked.

After that, Joshua Smith did occasionally dare to answer in class. His speech was improving, but not enough to satisfy him. So he still spoke very seldom. But his classmates began to notice that his answers were always on target, often when no one else could figure out how to work the problem; they soon stopped laughing and started listening. Neal George was particularly impressed. How his new friend could do this without any college background for this class, George wasn't sure he understood. Just natural brilliance, he guessed. And unrelenting hard work. The Kid would have been surprised – again, Heyes was working hard at something other than playing cards and opening safes!

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"Joshua, I must get back to the clinic right away today," said Miss Warren one early November afternoon. "I have a meeting with a new patient, so I don't have time to stay in the library. Do you want to go back with me?"

"No thank you, Beth. I'd like to stay in the library for a couple of hours – I'll walk home. See you tomorrow!" Heyes' speech was improving enough that the hesitations between words were hardly noticeable by now.

As Joshua Smith walked briskly toward the library, thinking more of his studies at the clinic than of anything else, he suddenly found himself at the center of a small crowd of students he recognized from his class – students who had been particularly rude and arrogant towards the quiet, older western student.

"Well, cowboy, you don't have your school teacher to look after you now, do you?" jeered a tall blonde New York millionaire's son named Aldous Clarkesdale – the very man Heyes had bested in front of the whole class the first time he had spoken up. For a wealthy math major from one of New York's finest families to be topped by a western nobody sit-in was obviously a problem for Clarkesdale and he hadn't forgotten it. In fact, Smith had beaten him out in class more than once since then.

"You going to pull a gun on us, or can you defend yourself without it, old man?" prodded another obnoxious boy, a baby-faced brown-haired boy named Hesselius Treadwell, who towered over Heyes nearly as much as Clarkesdale did. Treadwell gave the slight Heyes a shove, daring him to fight back. Heyes had tried to ignore the suddenly threatening students and go on his way, but now he was getting riled.

"Out of my way, boy!" said Heyes with an angry look.

"Make me, you hick!" taunted the strapping Treadwell, grabbing the shoulder of the westerner's jacket.

Clarkesdale took a swing at Joshua Smith, who neatly dodged the blow, and thrown a punch that stopped a swing a split second later from Treadwell. Before Treadwell knew what was happening, his intended victim had grabbed his right wrist to throw him off balance and slammed a fist into his eye. Treadwell landed hard on the sidewalk with a loud, pained grunt. Before Clarkesdale could react to this, Heyes had doubled him over with a couple of rapid blows to the stomach and then tripped him to land on top of his friend. "Watch out!" Clarkesdale called out from his knees, "the cowboy fights dirty!" But what had enabled Heyes to take down the larger men was not really his unfamiliar tactics. It was because, while his tormentors fought casually and carelessly, Heyes came back at them with a speed and intensity they had never seen before. They were having fun – he was in deadly earnest.

But no matter how many tricks Heyes knew in a fight and how rapidly he turned from one opponent to another, a third student coming along before the other two were fully dispatched was too much for Heyes to take on – or would have been if Neal George hadn't landed an enthusiastic punch of his own. A tall blonde student that Heyes hadn't met before cut down a fourth opponent with a scientific combination of blows to the head and stomach.

By the time four startled bullies had scrambled to their feet and been joined by a fifth compatriot who didn't even try to land a blow, Heyes was standing at the ready, his dark eyes smoldering. He hadn't yet drawn his long skinning knife – an even dirtier trick than those he had pulled before, but he would if he needed to. Neal George and the blonde stranger stood beside him, fists raised. Despite having their intended victims outnumbered five to three, the boys who had thought to torment the quiet westerner somehow found that they needed to be elsewhere in a hurry. The blonde undergraduate who had joined George in standing up for Smith pushed his long hair back out of his eyes and turned to the dark-haired westerner.

George introduced the two to each other, "Ev, this is Joshua Smith. He's a cowboy from Kansas."

"Hey, Josh, glad to meet you," said the slender blonde boy. "I'm Everett Carter. I'm from Long Island, but I don't have anything against a westerner, if he can do math."

Neal George laughed "Josh can sure do math alright! He's sitting in the intermediate geometry class. He never finished secondary school, but let me tell you, he's sharper at math than any of the majors. When Professor Homer can't find anyone in the regular class who understands something, Smith here always has it. He's one of Beth Warren's students, but I think he'll be here at Columbia soon – would be a waste if he weren't."

"Hah!"said Ev with grin, "You think those creeps are mad at you now, Josh. Wait until you start a degree and get ranked over them in classes! Glad to meet a fellow numbers man!"

"Thanks!" said Heyes, smiling. His speech was getting smoother as the semester advanced, for which he was grateful as he greeted a new friend. "Glad to meet you – easterner or not. And I was even gladder to have you help us out just now. Five against two is a – is hard when they're that tall." The three repaired to a local bar and cemented the friendship over cold beers.

While the three were leaning on the bar, Heyes asked Neal George, "Um, George, C . . . Clarkesdale said I fought dirty. In a . . . Western fight, everything I did was fine. Did I fight dirty?" George and Ev both nodded.

"Yeah, Smith," said Ev. "The way we fight here is no tripping, no grabbing, nothing below the belt, and I saw that knife you were thinking about pulling – no knives and no guns in a fair fight!"

"Oh," said Smith, taken aback "Maybe I'd better tell . . . Clarkesdale I'm sorry!"

"Don't bother, Josh," said Ev, the most practiced and knowledgeable boxer of the three. "You think five against three, much the five against one they wanted, is clean? And Clarkesdale and Treadwell are so much bigger than you are! No, what they did was a lot worse."

"Good!" said Smith, relieved, "cause that's the only way I know how to fight!"

The two easterners looked at their new friend cautiously, wondering about his past. Heyes thought he was saying that he only knew how to fight using all his western tricks. But Ev and Neal had seen in Joshua Smith a grim professionalism that was new to them. He didn't know how to fight for fun – he only knew how to fight for his life.


	3. Chapter 3

[My late work schedule of tonight having changed to tomorrow night, I will go ahead and post this.] Heyes was delighted by the brilliant results he got when he sat in with Professor Homer's class – he showed up the math major over and over, and led the class on the final exam. It was very, very hard work and the enmity of some students didn't help. And it wasn't as though Joshua Smith could concentrate entirely on the one difficult class he was sitting in with – he continued his therapy and his studies in a variety of subjects with Beth Warren. Yet he still managed, with long days and many nights of work, to complete a very successful semester.

Heyes had decided from the beginning not to share his challenges or triumphs in the class with Cat and the Kid until he could talk to them about it in person. If he just wrote letters about his studies, it would look like nothing so much as bagging. Heyes couldn't stand for Cat, and especially the Kid, to see him as some kind of academic snob who cared only about starting an academic career. He felt increasingly guilty as the semester progressed as it looked more and more like he might really go on to start a college degree. How could he take his own career forward at the expense of whatever security or at least companionship he might have helped to provide for the Kid and his lady? They had been counting on Heyes to come and be part of the team at Christy's Place. They had been counting on their friend to come back to them.

But the more he thought about it, the more Heyes felt that his own absence might actually be a good thing for the Kid and Cat, much as they missed each other. The Kid and Heyes had always been far easier to spot together than apart. Neither one of them was very distinctive looking to the point that a poster could make him easy to spot. Only together did the two excellent looking men grab attention. Back when they had first gone straight, the Kid had suggested that they part, both for this reason and because he had always felt that Heyes was better suited to honest life than he was. So maybe it wouldn't be so bad for Heyes to stay in New York.

It felt strange for Heyes to write letters back to Louisville that didn't mention what he spent most of his time on – both the class he was sitting in with and his studies with Beth Warren in other subjects from literature and composition to history and logic.

It was only during his Christmas visit to Louisville, his visit home as Heyes saw it, that he was able to truly share his academic triumphs and his ambitious plans with his friend. And even then, he did not dare to share his most ambitious ultimate plans. Heyes and the Kid, just before they went straight, had had the opportunity to see all too clearly the suffering their crimes caused for ordinary people, not only wealthy merchants and railroads. Heyes now began to hope that he might one day return to the West with the ability to help the people of his home region nearly as much as he had hurt them in his outlaw days.

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Once he returned to New York after his Christmas vacation with the Kid and Cat in Louisville, Colorado, Joshua Smith the new college student had plenty to do and not much time to do it in. He hadn't been officially accepted into Columbia until December (after his test results were in) and he would be starting school at the end of January. With the slowness of communication in those days, it made things extremely tight. Heyes anxiously gathered funding to support his studies. He wrote to several old friends from the wrong side of the law. He had to work hard on the letters. As with his speech, his writing had largely recovered from his Aphasia, but not completely. Many words came slowly. He often had to look up even simple words in the big dictionary Beth Warren had given him for Christmas.

To the former head of the Devil's Hole gang, now living a respectable and extremely wealthy life, Heyes wrote in his beautiful new copper-plate hand. He tried out a writing style more suited to a college student than to an outlaw, hoping it would prove to his old boss that he was ready for academic life. He just hoped he didn't found like the pompous fool he felt like.

"Dear Jim-

How are things in San Francisco? I hope you and Mrs. S are doing as well as when I last saw you two years ago. You surely do have a beautiful place there. Did Mrs. S manage to get that Rembrandt she had her eye on? It would make a splendid pair with the Rubens.

I don't know if you have heard about what has happened to me recently. You will, of course, understand why I must write somewhat elliptically. A hunter in the Colorado Rockies shot off his pistol in a random direction and my head happened to be where the bullet wound up. It didn't do me much good. At first, I had no use of language at all. I recovered understanding and reading fairly quickly, but speaking and writing were much slower to come back. I had to go to a clinic in New York City, the Leutze Clinic for Aphasia Patients. After more than a year there, I am almost as good as new. Except for the scar and a little hesitation in my speech now and then, I don't think you'd ever know about the bullet wound. At least I hope not. If you do not recognize the handwriting, it is because I have had to learn to write all over again.

In fact, things are going better than I ever thought. Inspired by your example, I am trying to start again. Don't you dare tell any of our old friends what I'm doing – they'd laugh till doomsday! I've been studying to make up for all the school I missed years ago. My tutor's pleased with my progress. She has recommended me to start a BA at Columbia University in – you guessed it – mathematics. They accepted me on a trial basis, considering my unorthodox background. No, don't worry, they don't know everything. The head of the department, Dr. Homer, has arranged a full scholarship for me starting this fall.

However, I am writing to you with a purpose beyond saying hello and sharing the news. I will be going to school very full time. I will be taking more classes than usual because I hope to graduate early - I'm not getting any younger. So I won't be able to hold down a job at the same time and I'll need some help with my living expenses. I can't bring in enough at poker to live on if I spend all my nights doing homework! I would be grateful for any loan you can make to me. Once I graduate and get a job, I promise to pay you back with interest. I am enclosing a letter of recommendation from Dr. Homer, in case you can't believe I've left my old life that far behind. You can ask anyone in the mathematics department at the University of California about Dr. Homer – they all know his reputation and some know him personally.

I would be grateful for whatever help you can see your way clear to providing. I hope to see you both in New York one day.

Sincerely,

Joshua Smith"

The answer came faster and was more positive than Heyes had dared to hope. The polish of the wording told Heyes that the Mrs. had probably written more than had her roughly educated husband, who had probably required some translation of Heyes' original letter:

"Dear Joshua-

My wife and I were grieved to hear of your injury. However, we are delighted to hear about your recovery progress and your academic success. Columbia University will never be the same! We are glad to be able to make some gesture toward repaying you for the great favor you did me three years ago. Please let me know if you need more than this. You need not be in any hurry to pay us back. Just study hard and let us know how you are coming along. We hope to get to New York in the spring, but we will write about that when the time comes.

Warmest regards,

Big Jim"

Heyes whistled when he saw the size of the check. It wouldn't take many more like that to get him through his BA. Heyes wrote a similar letter appealing to the soft side of to his old con artist friend Soapy Saunders, whom the Kid and Heyes had saved from prison. This second letter, too, bore fruit, if more modestly. Soapy had already done a great deal for Heyes and the Kid in the past, so he felt no need to be outrageously generous. Heyes found it harder to nail down some of his other friends. Diamond Jim Duffy, for instance, had not been doing well at the track, or in his even less legitimate ventures.

Heyes was gratified to find that some, if far from all, of his old friends had enough faith in him to give him loans. He got a bit uncomfortable, however, when it came to explaining to Dr. Homer and Miss Warren just who his benefactors were and why they would send checks to the budding student known to the world as Joshua Smith. Dr. Leutze knew the explanation, although he was surprised to find that a former outlaw was so popular with his old colleagues.

One February afternoon just a couple of week after the semester had started, Heyes was late for a meeting with Dr. Leutze. Heyes' doctor continued to be an important mentor to him. Leutze was, after all, the only man in New York to whom Heyes could speak completely honesty, since he was the only man who knew who Heyes really was. The ex-outlaw ran up the stairs at the clinic and started down the hall at nearly the same rapid pace. He barely managed not to run into a white-haired, bandy-legged figure planted squarely in the middle of the hall. The smartly dressed little man glared at Heyes angrily and shook a skinny finger in his face. "Young man, why on earth didn't you come to me like you did to Soapy and Big Jim and even Diamond Jim?" demanded Silky O'Sullivan in an even more crotchety voice than usual.

Heyes' mouth fell opened and he closed it as fast as he could. Silky the con man, who lived in San Francisco and seldom saw reason to leave it, was surely the very last person on earth he had ever expected to see here at the Leutze clinic in New York.

Heyes had to struggle to say his old friend's name, hoping it wouldn't make the little man even madder. "S. . . Silky! I sure am glad to see you! And . . . surprised. What brings you to New York?" Heyes reached out a hand. Silky pushed it aside brusquely.

"Don't duck the question, (ahem) Smith. Why didn't you write to me? Don't you trust me?" The old man, as he often did, looked murderously furious.

Heyes leaned as close to his old friend as he dared and responded in a low, urgent whisper, "The last time you saw us you . . . t . . . said you'd turn us in to the law if we ever asked you for anything more than a glass of . . . sherry! I thought you meant it! You sure sounded like you did!"

Silky bristled. "Well, I didn't know you were going to get yourself shot in the head and forget how to talk, now did I? And I sure didn't know you were going to up and attend Columbia University! So take this check, you young upstart, and don't give me any guff about it. Five percent interest and not a penny more! You're mighty lucky I happened to be in New York on . . . um . . . business. I don't send amounts like that through the mail!"

Heyes took the check Silky pressed into his hand. He almost dropped it when he saw the number written on it. Heyes recovered himself swiftly and addressed his old con man mentor ceremoniously, bowing and gesturing down the hall, "Mister O'Sullivan, I am deeply in your debt, sir! [Which was literally true, of course.] Would you do me the honor of taking dinner with me at . . . Delmonico's tonight?"

"I thought you'd never ask!" answered Silky rapidly, appeased for the moment. He looked skeptically at the dusty old brown suit Heyes was wearing, which was in fact the one he had so often worn out west. "You sure are talking fine – Thaddeus says couldn't say a word a year ago last fall. Not perfect, but pretty fine. But don't you have a better suit than that, or do you need me to buy you one? I'd be embarrassed to be seen in Delmonico's with a dinner partner in that awful suit."

Heyes chuckled and admitted to owning a slightly better suit. Heyes made his excuses to Dr. Leutze (who understood about the eccentricities of people who give grants) and went home to change while Silky did the same at his elegant hotel. Then the two old law breakers enjoyed a feast and fine wine at the most famous, and expensive, restaurant in New York. Heyes now knew that he would have no trouble making it through his degree financially - so long as he didn't frequent Delmonico's!


	4. Chapter 4

Before Heyes started his first semester of real college, he had one final essay to write for Beth Warren. She felt that he was well ready for college in math, but still worried about all the verbal subjects he would be taking on. His aphasia had almost no impact on his ability to do math, but it still caused problems for his writing. This last essay was the longest and most demanding Joshua Smith had ever attempted to write. It was intended to give him one more chance to get used to the length and sophistication of what he would need to do for college work.

Beth Warren had asked Joshua Smith to write in detail about his aspirations for college and the steps he intended to take to achieve them. Heyes found it a hard subject, since his knowledge of college procedures was, despite his semester sitting in, nearly as limited as any incoming freshman's before his first semester began. Also, he didn't dare to share even with Beth his most secret desire to use his new education to benefit his fellow westerners in ways that might well prove impossible. It was terribly hard to envision what might allow an unusually old student to make unusually fast progress towards a very distant goal.

Heyes rather resented being asked to put such complex and rapidly transforming thoughts onto paper. Yet Beth said that she had written a similar essay before she began college. Her essay had proven a guide and inspiration throughout her academic career, she said. So Heyes could see the use in this and he treated it as an important responsibility. But that didn't make it easy.

Heyes found that this essay required an unusual number of new words and new kinds of thinking and writing. And while he was writing, he had countless other distracting things to do as he registered for classes, bought textbooks, and completed his studies with Beth in several subjects. So Heyes found himself fighting against the limitations his lasting aphasia imposed on him – he was still very slow in mentally composing and physically writing anything at all. On the Sunday before his essay was due, he sat at the small desk in the "Smith Brothers'" room, struggling to fulfill this last commitment to Beth. He would write a paragraph, stare at it, and wad up the page. Then he would write another sentence or two, stare at it, and wad up another page of expensive paper. After doing this until his trashcan overflowed and his hand began to cramp, he furiously threw his pen across the room, scattering drops of ink everywhere. He stalked out for a breath of fresh air – or as fresh as New York City air ever was in the heat and humidity of summer.

Heyes almost without his own volition found himself walking the blocks uptown towards the Leutze clinic, as he had so many times before – though rarely on a weekend. Somehow, he had a feeling that the help he needed might be found there. He climbed the stairs and walked down the hall with his hands in his pockets, thinking so hard that he almost ran into Beth Warren as she came out of her office.

"Sorry Beth!" exclaimed Joshua Smith. "I hoped you might be here."

"You look upset, Joshua. Do you want to talk in my office?" Smith nodded and she went to take the places where they had sat so many times, on either side of Beth's broad desk.

"I . . . I'm having trouble with that essay. It's so hard to get my ideas all straight, and I just can't get the words to come . . . I'm so slow! I just feel so – stupid!" He leaned his head on his right fist. Beth saw in his eyes not only frustration but a kind of pain.

"Joshua, you are not stupid! I know that very well, and what's more, you know that. You are a very, very intelligent man. You've proven that every single day you've been here." Beth did her best to cheer up her student, but it didn't seem to do much good.

"If I'm not stupid, why do I write so slowly? Why can't I get my brain to work?!" Joshua demanded, of himself more than Beth.

"What's the name of the place where we are? It's a clinic for people with aphasia. You have aphasia – it's harder for you to communicate than it is for other people. Why do I have to tell you that again? It doesn't mean you're stupid! You know that after a year and half here!" Beth was feeling as frustrated as Joshua was. Why did she have to remind him of these simple facts that he had been grappling with for so many months?

"I've been here a year and a half – I'm supposed to be done here. My supporter's stopped paying for my treatment – I should be done! I should be well!" Joshua sounded angry – but at whom or what?

"You know it isn't that cut and dried. There isn't a set time for recovery." Then it hit Beth what was going on. "Joshua, I think I know what I'm hearing. You aren't just frustrated, as you have every right to be. You're scared – maybe you have some excuse for that. I think you don't have much reason, but you're facing something new and it's natural.

But I also think I hear something that I think isn't justified at all. You're feeling sorry for yourself because you aren't perfectly healthy yet and you know you might not ever be. Come on! Think of yourself a year ago and how far you've come! And think of Sam, who's never made any progress in getting his language abilities back at all. If you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for him! You have great promise for your future – he has none."

Heyes still sounded angry, "Sam's fine! Sam was never . . ."

Beth rounded on her student furiously, "How do you know what Sam was, before his stroke? What do you know about him other than how he is now – just silent and harmless. How do you know what he's lost?!"

Now Heyes began to wonder just what Sam had lost in his stroke, compared to what Hannibal Heyes had lost in being shot in the head. Surely Sam had never been a really brilliant man, as Heyes had always thought of himself as being. Heyes refused to admit to himself that his friend Sam could have changed that much, "But Sam's just . . . kind of dim – nice, but dim. He couldn't have been an educated man, could he? What was he, a cab driver, a farm hand?"

"Sam went to Harvard! He was Phi Beta Kappa – do you even know what that is? It's one of the most elite honor societies in the country! Sam was a successful bank president with a wife and family! He was a leader in his community, gave heavily to good charities – was a real benefit to society. Sam lost everything he had after his stroke. His wife left him and took the children and the court supported her. Now he's a poor, lonely porter who can't read or write or talk or understand. He can't tell anyone what pain he's in – but believe me, he feels that pain as much as anyone on earth!

And you feel sorry for yourself because you have to work a bit harder than other people, because you're mildly handicapped?! What did you do before you were shot that was such a boon to society? Weren't you a cowboy – a saddle bum – just avoiding work? What a waste of what you know full well is a brilliant mind! Your life is better now than it was before and you know it! Getting shot in the head might be the best thing that's ever happened to you! So you have to reach a little harder for a word now and then – don't you think you have the strength to put up with that?"

Heyes sat, stunned, for a full minute before he could reply. Beth was right and he knew it – he knew it far better than she could. He hadn't been any boon to society before he went straight – he had been a bane and a serious one. Who knew how many people were poor and desperate now, or even dead, because of the crimes Heyes and the Devil's Hole Gang had pulled? Getting shot, getting therapy, being around the good people at the clinic – especially Beth – had woken Heyes up and made him make use of what he still had. Maybe he wasn't a silver tongued con man any more or a famous criminal who could beat out any law man. Now he was a better man with a far, far better future. It wouldn't be easy, especially being still wanted and unsure of how long he could stay a free man, but he knew he could deal with college.

Joshua Smith nodded, head down and blushing a bit. "You're right, Beth. It's hard for me to fess up to it, but you're right. I'm so lucky. I don't even know who paid for my therapy, but whoever it is – I owe him – and you – and the doctors – I owe them my life. But I do still need help – with college. What can I do – to get past . . . my little problems?"

Beth took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Joshua. I just lost my temper. I shouldn't have told you that about Sam – that's violating patient confidentiality. Please don't ever let that information go any farther!"

"Of course, Beth. But don't be sorry – I needed to hear it. But what can I do – to help me get by? I admit it – I still need help." Heyes was sincere – as sincere as anyone using an alias can be. He was trying to set aside his old pride and to be honest with himself as well as with other people. This was a whole new aspect of "going straight."

Beth smiled at him encouragingly, "Just because you won't be in therapy here any longer doesn't mean that you can get help here, or that you don't have people you can turn to. You can come here any time and we'll be glad to help you in any way that we can. I hope you know how much we care and how much we always will. And now you've got a whole new group of people to help you – your professors!

So you can put aside your pride and go meet with each of your professors, as soon as possible – before the semester starts or as soon after as you can. You can explain to them what your difficulties are and see what help they can give you once they understand. I've contacted each of them already, but none of them is familiar with Aphasia. They won't understand the problems until you talk with them yourself. You just can't afford to hide your handicap from them – maybe from everyone else, but not from them. Alright? Can you do that? Maybe one day you won't be handicapped any longer – but right now you are, if only a little, and you have to deal with it honestly."

Heyes looked at Beth gratefully, knowing what an understanding person she was and how very much he needed that now. And maybe he always would. "I can do that. I will do that. You're right, it hurts my pride, but then everything since I got shot has been an . . . exercise in 'pride goeth before a fall.' I guess I had more pride than I had any right to."

Beth smiled a little wider. "But you have every right to be proud now – you've already accomplished a terrific amount. And you're about to do so much more! And while I'm telling you things you shouldn't know . . . No, I really can't tell you that – yet. I know you have secrets – well, so do we. If you work very hard at school, maybe you'll earn the chance to know what I can't tell you now."

"You mean who paid for my . . . treatment and my keep?" Heyes wanted so much to know to whom he owed his life.

"Yes. That's what I mean. And I really can't tell you. One day, perhaps," Beth smiled a bit sadly. Heyes thought about his own secret. If Beth ever learned it, she would be so disappointed! He had the feeling that he wouldn't be disappointed in whoever had paid for his treatment.

Heyes went back to his room and sat down with his pen and ink. Somehow, now his picture of what he wanted to do and how he had to go about it had cleared amazingly. The first step was for him to be honest, or as honest as he could be, with the new group of people who were there to help him – his professors. Like Beth, these were teachers who could change his life. Heyes was getting to have a whole new appreciation for teachers. And perhaps a whole new appreciation for himself, and how lucky he really was.


	5. Chapter 5

That spring, as Heyes started his semester as a real college student, he was glad that he had not been able to convince his advisor, Dr. Homer, to let him take more than the usual number of classes. Between freshmen classes in composition, English literature, ancient history, and statistics as well as algebra, he felt overwhelmed. He faced an amazing number of challenges simultaneous: thinking and working in that many subjects at once, while figuring out how to handle his time, a whole range of new people, new social obligations, and new terminology; it was all exhausting and baffling. Even if his problems with language had completely abated, which they certainly had not, it would have been terribly hard. Sometimes he almost forgot to be cautious of policemen and people from the West who might recognize him. Joshua, who was still sharing a tiny Hester Street tenement room with Jim Smith, had to strain to explain to his roommate what all of his obligations were. Just learning to say the names of all the professors and fellow math majors was hard. New names constituted one of his biggest remaining language problems.

As Heyes's first semester advanced, even the most initially hostile students seemed to gain respect for the scrappy westerner with the endless supplies of fresh ideas and right answers. There were still those, like Treadwell and Clarkesdale, who didn't take to Joshua Smith, nor he to them. But most of his fellow students, mostly easterners at least ten years younger than Heyes, had so little in common with him that they largely ignored him. Heyes didn't care much – outside of class they mostly seemed like squeaky-clean little choir boys to Heyes, while he seemed like an exotic and rather frightening western novelty to them

His class-mates' motivation for school work largely varied, in Heyes' eyes, from modest to nothing. Compared to them, Heyes, knowing so well what he had to gain and to lose, was wildly driven. He spent countless hours working in the little room he still shared with Jim, and in the library. The women undergraduates who tried to distract the handsome cowboy mathematician were all turned politely away, not without considerable regret on Heyes' part in some cases. As he had explained to the Kid, he simply didn't dare to get seriously involved with anyone.

There were a few students, however, with whom Heyes was happy to spend time. These included his Philadelphia friend Neal George who had finally made it to college at about the age of forty. George was a rather plodding intellect most of the time, but when he got to talking math with Heyes, his hazel eyes would start to glow and creativity would come bubbling out of him. George and his Long Island native math-major friend Everett Carter, who had met Heyes when he was still just sitting in with classes, were soon spending frequent Friday evenings with their new western friend. They introduced Smith to another new friend, a fiery-haired prodigy named Paul Huxtable. Huxtable was blazing his way through Columbia in his mid-teens. Heyes promptly nick-named Huxtable the Missouri Kid, after his beloved home state, so he sounded like some dangerous gunman rather than the wide-eyed, freckle-faced boy that he looked. All three of Heyes' new friends had started at Columbia a year before he had, so they could offer him useful advice. They were lastingly astonished at how rapidly he was catching up with them despite his lingering linguistic challenges.

One Friday the four oddly assorted math majors were laughing together as they met in the hall after each had come from his last class of the week. Winter was starting to turn into spring and all four men were feeling restless and ready for some fun. They repaired to their favorite corner of the mathematics lounge to discuss the matter. The room was supposed to be just for grad students, but the quartet didn't mind breaking minor rules when they could get away with it. They settled into four easy chairs around a little table littered with dirty coffee cups and plates and old newspapers.

The suggestion of a local bar didn't seem to fill the bill – they had spent too much time there on previous Fridays and they all wanted a new diversion. Heyes, truthfully, found his friends' social habits very dull in comparison with the adventures he had known in the west, but he wasn't about to lead them into lives of sin like his own had been. So he had just gone along with what they wanted to do so he could have the chance to talk with such interesting fellow math majors. Heyes stayed quiet while the others debated the question.

A wicked grin appeared on the Missouri Kid's freckled face, "How about some poker?"

Ev Carter shook his head, "Aw, Missouri, the rich guys and other majors know we majors can beat their pants off, so they won't play us. It gets awful dull just sitting around with math majors passing a few bucks back and forth. We played for a while when we first got here, but we gave it up. You remember."

The Missouri Kid laughed in his boyish tenor and said, "I wasn't thinking about playing in a dorm room. I was thinking about something more colorful – exotic players with some money, beautiful girls, a bit of danger. Sound better?"

Neal George sighed, "Missouri, you aren't thinking again about going down to those dives by the docks, are you? Those thugs carry knives and guns. We'd be in the river or the hoosegow in about 6 and a half minutes."

Huxtable looked crushed at having his exciting idea shot down by the older men. But then he thought about it and looked at Joshua. "Josh, you played poker out West didn't you."

Joshua couldn't help smiling as he remembered some of the big pots he'd raked in over the years, and the tension around those tables out west. "Yeah, Missouri. I played a lot of poker and black jack. It wasn't undergrads I was playin' either."

But Missouri wasn't done. "And you carry one of those big western knives, don't you?"

Joshua sighed. He wasn't happy with where this was going. He liked adventure as much as the next man, or more, but he know how far out of their depth his friends would be in the dock-side dives he knew so well. He preferred to have a real professional at his side – namely the Kid! And anything that could draw the law's attention to Joshua Smith, like a really bad fight, was something to be avoided. But he was starting to thirst for a little non-academic fun himself and he had to admit, "Yeah, Missouri, I carry a knife."

All three of his new friends turned to stare at the normally low key, even shy, Joshua Smith. Neal George asked cautiously, "And didn't I see you with a gun once?"

"Did you?" Heyes tried to stay casual, although he didn't like the realization that any of his Columbia pays had seen him with a gun. Neal must have been down by the docks or have seen Joshua on his way there, "Then you weren't on campus – I never carry here. It's against the rules." Some campus rules Joshua Smith might ignore, but never anything that could involve the law.

Ev asked in rather envious shock, "You have a gun?! You never told us that."

Smith shrugged. "You never asked. I'm an old cowboy, remember? I told you 'bout all the poker I've played. Don't ever go into one of those saloons without a gun on your hip!" He surely didn't want them to start thinking about the other uses to which he could have put a gun – like armed robbery.

Missouri was getting excited all over. He hadn't read as many western dime novels as Jim had, but he knew the genre, "You wear your gun tied down, Josh?"

Heyes gave his young friend a steady look that he intended as a warning, "Yeah, Missouri. Tied down. When I reach for my Colt, I want to be sure I know exactly where it'll be."

Missouri was more than intrigued, "You any good with it? Can you beat those guys by the docks?"

Smith shrugged modestly. "Sure. They ain't fast."

His friends stared at Joshua – Ev and Neal in horror, the Huxtable with an evident thrill. George said, "You mean you've actually been down there and pulled a gun on those guys?"

Joshua was so causal about this that his friends could hardly believe it. "Sure. I'm not much of a draw the way they figure it out west, but here, no problem."

Now Missouri was really getting worked up and his older friends were getting interested as well. Ev asked, "Would you go down there with us, Josh? With your gun?"

"Would you, Josh?" Asked Neal George. He wasn't the world's most adventurous guy, but this was starting to sound like an interesting evening.

"Only if you let me bring my roomie, Jim. He's pretty slick with a knife and he knows those places. I don't like to work alone. You boys are greenhorns. I mean, I know you aren't bad with your fists, Ev, but that'll get you only so far down there. Lot of those sailors carry, and not just knives. There isn't usually any trouble. You just play and leave and everyone's fine. But if there is trouble, it can get serious pretty fast."

"Sure, Josh. We aren't snobs – we don't mind if you bring someone who isn't at Columbia." Ev was an open-minded guy, especially when there was the promise of some fun.

Heyes sighed and accepted the inevitable. If they were going down to the docks, at least they needed him to watch out for them. But he stood up and demanded their attention with a little speech before they left, "And one more thing, boys. I'm in charge. What I say, goes. If anything happens, you need someone who knows what he's doing."

His friends stared at him. They hadn't seen Joshua Smith in this mood before. He was generally very quiet, even shy. He usually let one of them – Neal George or Ev Carter – take the lead. Now Joshua Smith was taking over. But no one challenged him. They saw a look in his eyes that was new to them and it was a little frightening.

On the way to the docks, the four Columbians went to "The Smith Brothers'" place, as Jim and Joshua Smith's tiny room was popularly known, on Hester Street. Joshua's Columbia friends had all occasionally met Jim Smith, the tough little New Yorker who had been beaten so badly by a gang that he had nearly died. Jim was a patient and now an employee at the Leutze clinic and he was good friends with Joshua. Jim was no scholar and would never think about going to college, but he was game to go down to the docks with his roommate's college friends. He grinned and winked at Joshua. This was going to hand Joshua's pals a whole new kind of education. Frankly, Heyes was hoping it would keep them from ever wanting to go down to the docks again.

The five men splurged on taking a pair of cabs down to the docks. Three of them looked around curiously and apprehensively. Joshua and Jim kept a sharp eye out. They took the boys to the safest bar they knew there – which wasn't saying much. The Green Parrot hosted a wide variety of sailors and longshoremen from all over the world and they didn't always get along. As the Columbians who hadn't been there before settled into a large stud poker game with some sailors, they were fascinated to see how Joshua Smith communicated with this polyglot crowd using silent hand signals that habitués knew well. Until recently, after all, Smith had been very limited in his ability to speak. And hand signals were a real help between nationalities – in fact, Smith's repertoire of signs was starting to be adopted by other players by the docks.

A lovely and voluptuous Danish girl named Alina came and stayed at Smith's side, much to the amusement of his college pals. Joshua's college friends could see that Joshua and Alina knew each other very well. This was a different man than the quiet scholar of the classroom. The intensity he brought to poker was familiar to his friends, though. The rough dockside characters smiled to see the innocent college boys, but the powerfully built longshoremen who were regulars knew Joshua and Jim. With the two Smith's alert eyes on them, the regulars didn't get too rambunctious.

At least at first they didn't. As the night progressed, the rum and whiskey flowed. The patrons of the Green Parrot started to get louder and rougher. "Come on boys," said Joshua. "It's gonna get rough in here soon. You've had your fun. Get back to your dorms before something happens that you can't handle." Joshua, as usual, hadn't touched anything more powerful than beer, but his Columbian pals had been trying out the rum.

"Aw, Josh," said Missouri, "we're just gettin' warmed up. They sure got pretty girls here!"

Ev, eying a lovely blonde and then contemplating his promising poker hand, agreed, "Yeah, Joshua, don't be a wet blanket."

A bunch of British merchant marines who knew Joshua had been drinking plenty of rum at the next table. One of them, a burly, much-tattooed sailor, looked over at Huxtable and laughed to Joshua, "Yank, you best throw that little fish back! He ain't fit to eat!"

Jim and Joshua knew better than to respond hostilely and merely laughed. But Huxtable, too drink to have good sense, rose to the bait. "And you can't even speak English!"

The British sailors laughed, but the one Missouri had addressed yelled back, using an old British nick-name for Americas, "Jonathan, you wouldn't know the King's English from Cantonese! Go – yourself!" And he flung the rest of his ale at the young red-head. Ev threw a picked egg at the Brit, and then the drunken Brits and nearly as drunken Columbians were getting to their feet, threatening to start a terribly one-sided brawl. The muscle Brits outweighed the young Americans by about 40 pounds each and they knew how to use that weight, even when they weren't too steady on their feet.

Joshua and Jim didn't wait to take action. Joshua took Huxtable by the collar and bodily hauled him away from the fray. He cocked an eye at Jim, who took the hint and obligingly smashed a chair over the largest British sailor's head to give Joshua some time to work. Joshua shouted for Ev and Neal to get out and take Huxtable with them. The westerner stood behind his four friends, making sure that none of the crowd of angry toughs followed them out. He pulled his knife and brandished it threateningly. The sailors were armed also, yet they allowed the Columbians and Jim to get safely away. The sailors laughed, but they looked at Joshua Smith with respect and one tossed him a salute.

Joshua and his friends made their escape with few bruises except to their egos and pocket books. His young friends had left their cash (what they hadn't already lost of it) on the poker table. The elder Smith, it turned out, had unobtrusively pocketed his own considerable winnings just as the ruckus broke out. He was hardly new to barroom brawls and could spot one brewing long before fists flew. It escaped no one's notice that the real reason the Columbia University group had escaped safely was that no one in the Green Parrot had wanted to tangle with Joshua Smith.

It had also not escaped Neal George's attention that Joshua had neatly taken charge when there was trouble. He had, as he had told them before they left campus, known exactly what to do and he had made sure that it got done. He was a leader in ways his friends had never suspected. Neal looked hard at his western friend as they parted under a street lamp. What he had seen was quite consistent with the saddle bum Joshua Smith had described himself as being. Under his breath Neal muttered a question, "Who are you really, Joshua?" But by then Heyes was too far down the dark street to hear him.


	6. Chapter 6

The expedition to the docks was the rare exception in Heyes' devoutly academic life that winter and spring. He devoted himself to school most of the time, with rare visits to Dr. Leutze for a little help on speaking and writing. The former outlaw spent long days in Columbia's library and the Astor Library, and evening hours bent over the little desk in the room he shared with Jim. Rarely did Heyes even venture out to sit in Central Park on a bench with a book – it was usually too cold and often too wet for such an outing. His naturally pale complexion grew paler yet as the semester went on with most of his hours spent indoors.

It was late to bed after reading, writing, and doing math, then early to rise and off to the library and class for Heyes. His routine rarely varied. He had a beer or two on Friday nights with his math major friends, but even then the talk was mostly of math and other aspects of school. After their dock-side adventure they shied away from poker and girls, although Ev had a lovely English major girlfriend who at times took him away from the little group.

One evening Jim came home after work and tripped over something in the dim light. Joshua woke up with a start – he had fallen asleep over his desk, with a fountain pen still in his hand. He cursed as he grasped uselessly for a pile of papers that slithered inexorably off the desk onto the floor. What Jim had tripped over was a new pile of history books – one of many such piles that populated the small room's floor. "D-D-Damn these books!" yelled Jim. "This p-p-place isn't b-b-big enough for all th-th-three of us – you and m-m-me and the S-S-Smith M-M-Memorial L-L-Library! It'll k-k-kill one of us yet – m-maybe b-b-b-both!"

Joshua burst out laughing and Jim joined in. "I can see the headline now," laughed Heyes, "Smith Brothers Perish in Tragic . . . Bookslide: All . . . Gotham Mourns!"

Jim grinned – and not only at his roommate's humor. Inventing a word like "bookslide" was a new step for Joshua that had arrived only in the last month. And city's old nick-name of Gotham surely couldn't have been a vocabulary word he studied at the clinic. The silver tongue was on his way back, one hard-won step at a time. It sure made Joshua more fun to talk with – especially for someone like Jim who had his own battles with language.

Joshua shook his head. "I'm sorry, Jim. I really have to get my own room and leave you be. I need space for a bigger desk and some files and bookshelves. It's not fair to take all your space here. I've got the money, from my friends out West; I just haven't taken the time to look for a place. I'll ask around and move over the summer. It's not like I have much stuff to move."

"Except for those d-d-damn b-b-books!" laughed Jim. 'I'll help you l-l-look for a p-p-place. B-B-But I'll m-miss you."

In the classroom during his algebra and statistics classes, Heyes' brilliance seemed almost effortless except for the occasional hitch in his speech on new or newly recovered words like "square root" and "axis." But Jim could have told his classmates that nothing about school was effortless for Joshua Smith. He made lists of names and terms and repeated them aloud to himself over and over (normally when Jim wasn't there, but Jim had walked in on this recitation once). He worked equations by the hour. And the verbal classes were many times harder, especially the writing. The dictionary grew battered as it was used constantly. The piles of wadded up paper did not cease accumulating – in fact the problem got worse as the semester advanced. The assignments got longer and more complex, especially in freshman composition class.

The formidable Professor Hargrove, Heyes' only woman professor, worried him more than any of his other teachers. When Joshua Smith had met with her before classes began, she had told her student that with his record of achievement with Beth Warren, making up five years of school in a year and a half and moving from cowboy to student, she expected nothing but excellence from him. Heyes threw himself into the work, committed to not disappointing someone who had that much confidence in him despite his aphasia. The long research paper, which Heyes wrote about his beloved Brooklyn Bridge, caused him to run into many frustrating road blocks when he just couldn't get the words to flow at all. And simply making himself stay indoors when the beautiful days of spring arrived was a struggle. He was taking no time for rides on Long Island.

As March brought out the daffodils in Central Park, Heyes worked ever harder at reading and writing and just constantly thinking toward the papers and exams that loomed at the end of the semester. He got by on less and less sleep and the shadows under his eyes got darker and darker. It seemed to get harder every week for him to concentrate on his work. One particularly difficult day found the older Smith up working by lamp light at 5:00 AM. He growled and got up to prowl around every spare foot of floor, muttering a string of curses to himself. He tripped over Jim's bed and grouched, "Why don't you get out of bed, Smith, my God it's morning!"

"N-N-No it ain't, S-S-Smith, it's st-st-still n-n-night b-b-by me! G-G-Get out of here! You're d-d-driving me n-n-nuts with the p-p-pacing and the c-c-cursing!" yelled Jim at last.

So Joshua went for a walk in Central Park and sat on his favorite rock as the sun rose behind his back. The stressed-out former outlaw actually fell asleep there until a bum tripped over him. Heyes leapt up with a start and consulted his old pocket watch. It was 8:00 AM. By the time he could get to the clinic, it would be opened to patients. So that was where Heyes went, looking for answers. Dr. Leutze might not be the right person to consult, but he was a doctor and he certainly had been to school himself and must have worked very hard. The bleary-eyed Joshua asked Polly if he might get a few minutes with Dr. Leutze. The good doctor was with a patient, but Heyes was willing to wait. He spent the time reading a book for history class, of course. Finally Dr. Leutze stuck his head out of office and beckoned Heyes in.

"How's school going, Heyes? It must be quite a change from dodging posses out West!"

"You aren't kidding, Doc," said Heyes. "I don't know how long I can take this, to tell you the truth. I've got this headache that just won't quit and I can't seem to write no matter what I do. I just feel like sleeping all the time, but then I have . . . nightmares. Not about posses – about school – and never getting home. And I don't have much time for sleep anyhow. Sorry I'm such a . . . wreck. I fell asleep on my rock. You know the one."

"I see," answered Dr. Leutze thoughtfully, "Have you tried just resting? It looks to me like you've got eye-strain and exhaustion at the very least."

"I don't have time to rest, Doctor!" Heyes flared up in frustration, pacing back and forth nervously as he talked. "I've got work and more work to do all the time! I have a hard time staying focused and sometimes it seems like I just don't care that much. How can you say to rest?!"

"There you go! Grouchiness – classic symptom." responded the Doctor. "It's just stress and strain. Take an afternoon or a morning off. Go for a walk, or a ride. You need to have a balanced life – enough exercise, enough time to just breathe. Your work will be so much easier – and better – if you get away from it periodically. Avoid late nights and poker and alcohol, though!"

Heyes grinned self-consciously. "So you heard about that, did you? Well, no more! No more poker until summer, when I go home to Colorado. Gosh, that sounds strange. Home. For so long I never had one, not since I was a kid, not really."

Leutze gently teased his patient, even while continuing to make his point. "There's another symptom – inability to stay on one subject. We were talking about your over work. Get plenty of rest and don't take on anything extra. Do just what you really need to do. Find a quiet friend instead of those young firebrands of yours – just get away and enjoy yourself. Then back to work! You'll find it easier to stay motivated. Alright?"

"Alright, Doc," agreed Heyes. He said good-bye and walked back to his place where he might have time to sleep for an hour before his first class that day. But he wondered as he walked. Who would be both quiet and enjoyable company for an afternoon off? As Heyes walked out of the clinic, his mind went back to the place he was just leaving. He smiled fondly. It was no contest – he knew who he wanted to spend time with – who he missed the most.

Heyes enjoyed his math friends, but they were hardly mentors and their guidance was frequently off target. Professor Homer was helpful and welcoming but Heyes felt nervous about spending much time talking with someone so senior. It seemed to Heyes that Professor Homer, who was from Wyoming Territory and still paid attention to what went on there, might actually be able to figure out who Heyes was if he was given too much opportunity to learn personal details about his prize student. So Joshua Smith kept his socializing with Professor Homer to a minimum. With this awkward, and for the professor inexplicable, distance between student and mentor, Heyes sometimes felt a bit at sea. And at times it was hard for him to feel motivated to work as hard as he had when he was studying with Beth Warren.

Heyes thought about that and realized what he wanted to do for his break and who he wanted to do it with. He scanned the New York newspapers and found what he was looking for. On Friday evening, Heyes walked a few blocks down from Columbia to a familiar brownstone. He went up to the second floor and knocked. Blonde Polly the receptionist at the Leutze clinic was delighted to see Joshua Smith again so soon. "Joshua! Welcome back! How's school going?"

Joshua smiled back at her. "Hi Polly! It's hard, but it's fun. The math is great, but all those words in the other classes . . . And I thought Beth's lessons were hard!"

Heyes went down the familiar scuffed grey hall, wiping sweaty palms on his pants as he went. Usually, Beth Warren hung around the office for an hour or two after her last tutoring session on a Friday evening, checking papers or planning so she wouldn't have to worry too much about work over the weekend. At least, that was what she had done the previous year. Heyes knocked at her closed door, hoping she would still be there.

"Who's there?" called the familiar voice, sounding a bit distracted.

"It's me, Joshua. Joshua Smith. Can I come in?" Joshua thought Beth would be glad to see him, but he hoped he wasn't annoying her when she was really busy.

"Joshua!" After only a moment the door flew open and Beth Warren stood in the doorway smiling at her former student. She brushed eraser crumbs off her lap. Heyes could see that she had been planning on her usual yellow legal pad, and a wisp of her wavy, frizzy brown hair was coming out of its bun. She pushed back the stray lock self-consciously. Heyes found the imperfections in his former tutor endearing and he smiled at her, starting to relax just a bit. "Come in, please, Joshua." Beth said. "What can I do for you? Can I help you with anything on your college work?"

Joshua went in and hovered awkwardly, no longer belonging in the student's chair that was the only place to sit besides Beth's own creaky wooden office chair. Heyes paced nervously as he spoke.

"Actually, I'm not having any particular trouble with the classes, except for just it's all so . . . demanding. The content is great, but the work is . . . grinding me down. But I didn't come to talk about school. . . I noticed that the American Watercolor Society is opening a show on Saturday . . . and I . . . um wondered if you'd like to go. With me, I mean. You're probably busy . . ." Heyes had never asked such a well educated woman to step out with him before, or asked anyone to an art exhibition. He felt totally out of his depth.

"No, not at all. I'd love to go!" Beth smiled so warmly that Heyes was a bit taken aback. "Thank you for asking me! That's so sweet. I've – I've really been missing . . . working with you." She sounded a little nervous herself. Heyes thought she seemed pleased, but he wasn't quite sure. He had never seen his normally unflappable tutor look so uncomfortable. Had he violated some unwritten rule by asking her to go someplace with him? She wasn't his teacher any longer. It wasn't like he was asking her on a real date. He wasn't courting her – he just wanted a chance to talk and he knew that she liked art. She had taken him, and some other students, to an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum early in his studies with her. "What time is it? I mean, the opening," Beth asked.

"It's at 2:00. Maybe we could have lunch first? At that little place you like a few blocks down from the Met, on Lex? You know – Tony's place. We could meet there, at twelve-thirty?" Heyes hoped he hadn't suggested anything improper, but Beth smiled. He was sure that Beth would get him all excited about school again, the way she always had. He was eager to tell her all about his classes - how well he was doing at math and how hard all the courses with extensive writing were.

"Sure, Joshua. I look forward to it. Thank you for asking me! I'm kind of jealous – I just don't have time for college classes this semester. I'm working with three new students, and the five from before are coming along faster and faster – although none of them as fast as you did! But there, we'll have plenty of time to talk about that tomorrow. See you at twelve-thirty!"

Joshua waved to her and left. He had missed Beth more than he had realized until he saw her again. As he got out on the street again he paused and an uncomfortable thought struck him. Did he have a crush on his teacher? At the age of 33, he couldn't possibly, could he? That would be mighty foolish. She was about his own age, he thought, or maybe just slightly older. Perhaps a crush wasn't quite the word. Beth was a little plump and no beauty, although she had a nice smile. Hannibal Heyes had never stooped to romance with anyone but a young beauty. Beth Warren wasn't that at all. She was a good, decent woman and he enjoyed talking with her. He trusted her advice. And he had missed her. They were just friends. He was missing the woman he had spent so much time with for the past year. That was how he explained it to himself as he walked home to the tenement on Hester Street.

When Saturday noon came, Beth and Joshua had such a lively talk over lunch, discussing all his classes and her students and exchanging ideas about all sorts of current events that they almost forgot to walk the few blocks over in time for the opening. But when they got there, they were glad they had come. There were watercolors of New England and Italy, two places Heyes had certainly never visited. Beth had been to New England and could say how accurate the scenes were and comment on the light and tell some stories about her trips to visit friends on the coast of Connecticut and in Boston. She hadn't been to Italy, but they both wanted to go and were glad to be able to see this distant place in color, with the hand of the artist to guide them.

And then there were watercolors of Colorado and Wyoming by Thomas Moran. Joshua hadn't realized that his old acquaintance's work would be in the show. He excitedly told Beth that this was the artist they had discussed on their second day working together – the artist whom Joshua had met when he was riding with a scientific expedition to Yellowstone. Moran had been making sketches for the big painting that Beth had seen hanging in the Capitol Building in Washington. There were aspects of his encounter with Moran that Heyes couldn't tell Beth about, but he almost forgot that in his excitement at introducing Beth to the western landscapes he knew so well. The spectacular scenery, geysers, mountains, mud-pots, and waterfalls of the Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon were things that Beth had never seen but that Joshua had seen many times in Wyoming over the years.

"Are the rocks really such bright colors, Joshua?" Beth asked. "White and yellow and orange and red and green? It seems impossible!"

Joshua laughed. "Yeah, that's how it looks. Skinny little Moran got it just right. You know, he'd never been West? Never even ridden a horse before he joined that expedition! But he wasn't shy – he was always riding out front, climbing around, looking at everything. Always had his sketchpad and watercolor kit with him. There was a photographer – Will Jackson – a good guy. But no color in photographs! Moran got the color in those little watercolors – like that one. Oh, yeah, that's how it looks. I can about hear the waterfall in that watercolor roaring – see there? The rainbow over the falls – that's just the way it looks."

"Golly!" Beth exclaimed. "How long ago was that? Have you gotten in touch with Mr. Moran? Doesn't he live in New York?" She could hardly grasp all the beauties that Joshua had lived among before he had come east.

Beth was puzzled to see Joshua suddenly look tense when she asked these questions. Something potentially dangerous had occurred to Heyes. Moran might show up any minute to this opening! Smith would never have suggested coming if he had known that Moran's work would be in this show and that the artist had moved to New York. When they had met, under memorable circumstances, the artist's studio had been in Philadelphia. Finally, belatedly, Heyes came out of his thoughts to answer Beth's questions as best he could, "That was in '71, Beth – I was hardly more than a kid. There were several of us about my age on that expedition. Moran wouldn't remember me." Silently Heyes thought, "I hope to God he doesn't remember me! I sure hope Moran doesn't show up for the opening! I wasn't using an alias yet then!" When Heyes had met Moran, Heyes had been a young outlaw who hadn't achieved fame yet. But it hadn't been long before he did. His name had begun to be known out west even before he was with Devil's Hole. And when he started leading the Devil's Hole Gang, his name and the Kid's had become known all over the country as they appeared in headlines about their robberies month after month. Moran was all too likely to have noticed and remembered what had happened to the young man he had met in Wyoming in 1871.

Joshua felt a bit nervous until they left the gallery and he walked Beth back to her own neighborhood. Moran never showed up and Heyes sure hoped he wouldn't. Heyes didn't know how many important artists bothered to come to group show openings – that was way outside of his experience. As Smith bid his old tutor farewell, he put aside his worries and felt pretty good about his outing with Beth. Heyes had had a good time talking with Beth and he felt inspired to get back to his schoolwork with fresh energy. Joshua and Beth had promised to look in the newspaper for a good concert or exhibition to go to together soon. Smith couldn't afford the time for an afternoon away from his school work very often, but when he could, he and Beth went to a concert or an art show. For poker games, there was no longer any time at all.


	7. Chapter 7

A week after his refreshing, if worrying, outing with Beth, Heyes went out to Long Island for the first time in many months and went riding by himself on a lovely afternoon. He enjoyed being with the horse, and being out in the open air among the early wild flowers and the trees just leafing out for spring. But it took him a while to settle down and stop looking over his shoulder. Finally he did, and he went out on the public road where there was room for a real gallop. Heyes enjoyed that, with the horse's hoof falls growing faster and faster and lighter and lighter under him until it felt almost like flying. He had always loved a good gallop, unless there was a posse behind him. Heyes pulled up and put the horse into a walk to cool him out on the way back to the horse's home farm. As they neared the farm, Heyes asked for an easy canter along the tree-lined road. As he cantered along, Heyes saw a man standing under a tree staring at him, turning his head to watch the horse go by. Something about the tall young man's level gaze sent a shiver up Heyes' spine.

In New York few people took notice of Joshua Smith; out West when someone stared at Heyes and the Kid like that, it was usually a sheriff or a bounty hunter and that stare was the signal for them to take off running yet again. Here, surely not! As he dismounted and untacked the horse and rubbed him down, Heyes said silently to himself "You're getting paranoid, Heyes! They don't chase outlaws here! It's just some guy who was surprised to see me in western rig." But he couldn't get that long, quiet, studied gaze out of his mind. As he walked back to the train station, Heyes kept looking over his shoulder. There was no one there – that Heyes could spot. But he felt very out of practice watching his back in quite that way.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooo

As the spring came on and Joshua's initial spring semester was drawing near its end, he and Beth went to a chamber music concert together. It was a first experience for Heyes. Afterwards he and Beth went to a little sidewalk cafe.

"I was afraid you might be bored, Joshua. But you seemed to really enjoy the music!" Beth was happy to have a positive response to her experiment in introducing her student to the more intimate side of classical music. They had been to the symphony before just once, when Heyes was still in therapy, they had gone with several patients. He had had loved it.

Heyes' eyes glowed with enthusiasm. "It's so . . . beautiful! I play some guitar, but boy, nothing like that! It was great to sit close enough to see what they were doing. I love how they all work together so close – closely!" Heyes was still having to actively work at his grammar, since he hadn't grown up hearing correct speech.

Beth was surprised. "I didn't know you played guitar, Josh! How did you learn?"

Suddenly the same pain Beth had seen in Joshua's eyes when they first worked together was back. Joshua was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, "My mother taught me." It was the first time that he had ever mentioned his family to Beth, although she had tried sometimes to get him to talk about his family and his childhood.

Beth looked at her former student closely, wondering if she dared to follow up this opening. "Joshua, you've never told me anything about your family. I would like to know about them, if you want to tell me."

"I don't," he answered, brusquely, looking away from Beth. Then he looked at her and his eyes softened a bit, "I'm sorry, Beth. I just really don't want to talk about it. It's not a nice story. They were good folks . . . but . . . it's not a nice story."

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Joshua! You don't have to tell me anything. But if you want to know about my family, I'll tell you." It hadn't occurred to Heyes that Beth's family might have a sad story, too, but the tone of her voice made that plain. Since he could not reciprocate, he had never dared to ask her. She had mentioned her home on their second day together, but had seldom said anything about it since.

"If you don't mind, Beth, I would like to know," Heyes suddenly felt very close to this woman and he did want to know.

"You know we lived in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside Washington, D.C. It was a nice little house for our family – my older sister Barbara and me and my parents. My father was a wonderful man. He told the funniest stories! And he loved books, and so did my mother. I remember sitting around the stove listening to my parents telling us family stories, and stories about American history, and reciting our favorite poetry!" Beth's face glowed at the warm memory.

"Pa was a clerk for the patent office. He knew Clara Barton – she was a clerk there too, before the war. But he quit that to fight for the Union. He saw Miss Barton now and then on battlefields. He wrote us wonderful letters about where his unit went and funny stories about things in camp. He didn't say too much about battles – with two little girls reading every word!

Pa was in the Third Maryland Infantry. After the Battle of the Wilderness, in May of '64, we stopped getting letters. We didn't know if he might just be hurt, or killed, or captured, or what. So Ma went out there to look for him – it wasn't far - just in western Virginia. She left Barbara and me staying with our maiden aunts down the street. She said she would be back in a few days with news, and if we were lucky, maybe with Pa." Beth's steady voice broke and tears came to her eyes. "She never came back and neither did he."

Heyes reached across the little table and took his friend's hand. It was the first time he had ever touched Beth more than incidentally; but she undeniably needed a human touch just then. She started and looked up at Joshua with such a mix of emotions in her eyes that he wasn't sure what to think – there was sorrow and pain there, to be sure; but also something very different. "I'm so sorry, Beth! What happened – to your parents?"

Beth sobbed for a moment before she could go on. "My mother was on a train that derailed – she was killed. The body never even came home! But it was weeks before we knew that. And we never were sure about my father – you know they didn't keep records about the wounded and dead. We asked around in the unit, when they came home. We think . . . we think he was wounded and . . . and burned to death on the field. So many did!"

Heyes put his arms gently around Beth and just held her. He could feel her trembling. "It's all right, honey," he whispered, "it's alright."

Beth looked up at his eyes, so close to her own, "I'm sorry, Joshua. I didn't mean to . . . break down like that. You don't have to . . ."

Joshua took his arms away. He knew that he had overstepped a social line – the barrier between student and teacher, mentor and mentee – but whether or not it was a line she had wanted him to cross he was less sure. "I understand, Beth." He said, softly. She could see in his sad brown eyes that he understood her loss all too well.

"Joshua, do you want to tell me – about your own family?" Beth hoped that her student would want to reciprocate after she had shared her own tragedy. She wasn't just curious – she felt that he really needed to have someone else understand what his painful losses, as she would.

Joshua shook his head. "No. I . . . I can't. I appreciate you – your telling me – but I really . . . can't." And Heyes meant it. It wasn't just that he didn't want to cry in public or look weak in front of his friend; it was that he knew what questions would follow the revelation of what had happened to his family. He couldn't answer those questions without blatantly lying in a way that Beth would catch instantly. Any such questions, answered honesty, would lead directly to how Heyes and the Kid had gotten to be outlaws. Any honest answers could destroy both men; where Heyes and Beth sat in pubic, anyone could hear his story. So he simply couldn't tell it.

Joshua's eyes went from warmly opened to dull and closely shuttered. He said, "I'd better take you home." As the pair walked down the street, they felt awkward. Heyes felt terrible that Beth had so generously opened herself to him and he had refused to do the same for reasons he could never tell her. He cast about for some way to make things better. Just then, he saw a poster on a tree. It announced a dance to be held in Central Park the next week – an outdoor dance with an orchestra and a dance floor and gas lights. The tickets would be very affordable.

"That sounds nice!" said Beth, with a little smile.

Heyes, much against his better judgment, asked his former teacher, "Would you like to go? I haven't danced in a long time, but we could try it if you want to." Beth's brilliant smile gave him his answer.

Beth was blushing as she answered him. "Why, I'd love that, Joshua! I haven't danced in a long time myself, but at least we could just listen to the orchestra and maybe try an easy one or two? It's so nice of you to think of it. I'll have to pick out a nice dress so I won't embarrass you." Beth sounded genuinely pleased. She wasn't crying any more. She had helped Heyes so many times – he was glad to have a chance to return the favor. But the satisfaction of making Beth feel better meant far more to him than the mere trading of favors.


	8. Chapter 8

After a very busy few days of school work, late to bed and up early, Heyes again found time to sit on his west-facing rock in Central Park, reading a book for his history class. He was trying to follow doctor's orders, which seemed to be working out well. His headache had gone away and his work was certainly going better, although thoughts about Beth distracted him now and then. What was he starting with her? And if he was sitting on his rock, it meant he was thinking about the Kid and Cat, too. What was going on out west and what would they think of what was happening with Heyes? He hadn't found time to write to them for a long time and so their letters had slowed as well. Heyes kept worrying about that damned Sheriff Wilde and how he was playing with the Kid and, less directly, with Heyes.

As Heyes sat, he heard two young men's voices talking quietly behind him, almost out of earshot but not quite, on the other side of a thicket of trees and underbrush.

"Clark, you know what Tryon out on Long Island told me? You'll never guess who he said he saw riding a horse out on the Island last weekend."

The voice that must be Clark's came back, joking, "Hannibal Heyes!" Heyes had to fight every instinct he had to avoid jumping to his feet or turning his head or even moving at all. Every nerve in his body came to the alert, even though the man was only joking.

"How'd you guess, Clark?" ["Aw Christ!" thought Heyes, "It's a mistake to be too well known!"]

"You know Tryon feels about western outlaws – after what happened to his brother! As weird as he is about it, I thought it was a good guess, Mount."

"It was! Tryon said he was off duty walking along and saw this guy riding by in western gear. Looked familiar somehow – you know how Tryon memorizes wanted posters."

"Yeah, I know. Tryon's off his rocker about it. Does he think Kid Curry's gonna show up on Long Island, too? Why do you think they stuck Tryon way out on Long Island? He's not normal!"

"I think you're right there. Tryon looked through the western posters, and there he was. Hannibal Heyes - five foot eleven, slender build, long brown hair, brown eyes, dimple by the left side of his mouth. Tryon wasn't completely sure about the dimple and eyes, the horse was cantering and the guy was wearing a hat; but it was a black cowboy hat just like Heyes is known to wear, Tryon says. Tell you the truth, it must have been getting dark by the time of evening when Tryon said he saw him - Tryon could have imagined the guy's face entirely. There's never been a picture of Heyes or Curry."

Heyes listened to this conversation between what must be two policemen with rising anxiety, knowing that there was nothing he could do except to try to look natural as he sat. If he moved, or left, or worst of all turned to where the policemen could see the face they had just described, it would be disastrous. He tried to just breath normally and keep looking at his book, although he wouldn't remember a word that was in front of him.

Mount went on with his story, "But that day when he saw the guy riding, Tryon had followed on foot. Not hard to follow the hoof tracks on that dirt road! I guess nobody can cover all his track – not knowing anyone would want to follow him."

So after Tryon looked up the poster he went back and found the farm where the guy – his so-called Hannibal Heyes - had rented the horse. Tryon talked to the lady who owns the place. She said the man used to come on weekends every couple of weeks to go out riding, sometimes with a friend, but she hadn't seen him in months before this. They would do some shooting at cans on a fence with a pistol. But it's funny; the lady said there was a big scar on the riding guy's temple. And when he first came, he could hardly talk at all. Communicated mostly with gestures. Now he talks fine. But there's no word of Hannibal Heyes ever being shot in the head. Word on that would get around fast. Got to be another guy. And his friend he went riding with – little guy with a scarred face - nothing like Kid Curry or any other known Heyes associate."

The other man whistled. "Tryon is crazy, but wow! What if he caught Hannibal Heyes? He'd be damn rich, wouldn't he! Could retire and needle us all forever about thinking he's nuts."

"Well, he'll be camped out on that road on Long Island this weekend and every weekend until the Heyes guy shows up again. Tryon's just positive he's going to retire a rich man!"

"He's as crazy as twenty loons!"

"And everyone knows it."

"But what is he's right? I checked - nobody's seen Heyes out West in a couple of years . . . a guy dressing in western gear here – wouldn't be hard to spot. The face by itself would be harder."

The two gossiping policemen moved off. Heyes wished he could follow them to hear if they said more, but he didn't dare. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would burst out of his chest, but he tried to sit just as if nothing had happened. His mind was racing – what could he do? A sudden bolt to the West would certainly attract unwanted attention – excellent western student known to have partner in Louisville, Colorado vanishes suddenly just before exams? Descriptions compared, a match found. It would be suicide for both Heyes and the Kid.

Heyes would just have to stick it out and be very, very careful. It was nearly the end of semester. Instead of going to Colorado for only a couple of weeks at the beginning of June and then coming back to New York to study over the summer, he could ship books out to Colorado. Then he could stay in Colorado and study all summer in hopes that things would be less hot when he came east in the fall for school. If he dared to. Give folks time to forget about the crazy policeman and who he thought he had seen on Long Island. Heyes could just hope that the crazy Long Island policeman would never be able to prove that he really had seen Hannibal Heyes, and that the other policemen would remain convinced that their Long Island colleague was crazy so they wouldn't be scouting for Heyes themselves. Heyes would sure never return to Long Island! It was too bad. He'd really enjoyed going out there.

As soon as the policemen were safely gone, Heyes, keeping a close eye out for any policemen or anyone else who could be watching or following, took a cab to a telegraph office and sent the following communication to Louisville using an old alias he hoped the Kid would remember:

To Thaddeus Jones, Christy's Hotel, Louisville, Colorado

Man in blue on Long Island had a grand inspiration ten times over on seeing a horseman no one believes him but me stop have your own horse ready in case they start believing stop I will come soonest and stay longest please stop

Cedric Thorpe the Third, New York, New York

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooo

In Louisville, Kid Curry and Cat Christy stood in the back room at Christy's place with their heads close together reading this enigmatic communication that had just been delivered to them from the telegraph office. They were trying to figure out all the meaning packed into it.

"Who in creation is Cedric Thorpe the Third, Jed?" Cat asked in puzzlement.

The Kid knew at least part of that one straight off. "That's Heyes. Heyes used that an alias on some job or other. Wish I could remember which one! I know he's trying to tell me something and I just can't remember!"

"Well I figured it was Heyes, using another alias for security. The man in blue must be a policeman." Cat had been east a couple of times and seen policemen in blue.

"Must be," agreed the Kid. "And a grand ten times over is the reward on Heyes, so that must mean the guy recognized Heyes and wants to turn him in, though what he means by inspiration I can't figure." The Kid shook his head.

"Just some extra poetry, I guess. You know what Heyes' letters are like these days, when he writes at all, showing off his fancy new words. We'll have to get a dictionary to keep up with him." Cat sounded a bit put off.

The Kid guessed, "I think he'll bring one – since he says 'come soonest and stay longest.' He won't go anyplace these days without books. What I can't figure out is how he knows somebody spotted him when they haven't cashed him in. And how he knows that nobody believes the guy – yet. But I'm glad Heyes warned me. I'll make sure my get-away saddle bags are packed just right, in case I need to take off again."

"You never even told Heyes about the time Harvey Masters from the old Clint Longley Gang came through last month and you had to skedaddle till he was clear." Cat reminded the Kid.

The Kid made a dismissive gesture, "Didn't want to worry him – wasn't anything he needed to know way out in New York. He's busy with school stuff."

"That's what I mean – you guys used to tell each other the least thing that could be a threat. Now you're not being so careful. He wouldn't be sending this if it wasn't serious. Make sure you've got two canteens ready with your pack – summer's coming!" Cat was getting more and more protective of her man, now that his partner wasn't around to watch his back.

"Yes, ma'am!" said the Kid sarcastically. "I do know about escaping from the law – been doing it a long, long time." Then the Kid's voice suddenly changed. "Oh Cat! I just remembered when Heyes used Cedric! That was a scam Heyes and I pulled in the Devil's Hole days. We dressed up as sheriff's deputies. We got talking and we 'accidentally' let a guy in the Lee-Howard Gang hear what we were saying so they'd stay away from a mail train we wanted to hit ourselves. We made them think it was going to be guarded every which way from Sunday! Heyes really went to town on that one! I guess maybe Heyes actually did hear two real policemen talking and they know somebody spotted Heyes and they don't believe him. Make sense to you?"

"Makes sense to me, Jed," agreed Cat, "Wonder where Heyes was that two policemen would be talking that close to him? I surely do hope that they keep on not believing the guy who spotted Heyes! I guess it does seem kind of unbelievable to those New Yorkers, an authentic western outlaw riding around on Long Island! Guess what we expect sometimes gets in the way what's really there to see. We'd better keep our own eyes peeled – we could get a New York policeman out here any time!"

"I guess stay longest means he wants to stay with us this summer until the guys in New York forget that anyone ever brought up our names. Well, I guess we can put up with him for a while." The Kid smiled at Cat. He surely was missing his partner, and he knew Cat did, too. The Kid checked his canteens and ammunition, ready near the Christy's place back door for a quick getaway. No more of having Cat carry his saddle bags down stairs like the first time the Kid had had to ride away from a bounty hunter in Louisville! He had used them more than once since then.


	9. Chapter 9

Pacing back and forth in the "Smith Brothers'" place, Hannibal Heyes anguished over whether or not to go to the dance with Beth. Might he be putting himself in too much danger, only two weeks from the end of the semester and exams towards which he had been working for nearly four months? Might he be putting Beth in danger? Yet, considering the skepticism in the voices of the gossiping policemen, he wondered how seriously he should take being spotted. He hoped that he might be safe until the end of semester. Or at least if he might be as safe as he ever was anywhere - so long as he stayed off of Long Island and out of his western gear.

Heyes had been working very hard and he was feeling uncommonly virtuous. He was also feeling confident, and he had not yet escaped his addiction to the mastery of danger. And think as he might, Heyes just couldn't come up with a decent excuse to give Beth to pull out without hurting her, and he sure didn't want to hurt her. He might not see her again for a long time, if ever, if the policeman scare actually did turn out to be serious.

Heyes the dedicated student would be under wraps almost continuously for the next two weeks, except when he was actually in exams or going to and from them. So Heyes went to the dance in his best suit, primed to face down any danger. It would be his last fling. But Heyes was not a total fool. He made sure that his hair, which had grown out even longer since he had had no time to get it cut, was neatly slicked and combed to cover his scar completely. There wasn't much more he could do to in the way of a disguise without making things worse. He would just have to brazen it out and hope his excellent eastern tailored suit and new ease of speech would see him through for a lone evening in pubic before he returned to his room to complete studying for exams.

Beth, as was fitting for the occasion, arrived in a dress that was far more revealing than anything that he had ever seen her in. In that dress she looked pretty shapely, Heyes thought. Her deep burgundy frock showed some enticing décolletage. Joshua tried not to let his eyes stray into the wrong place, but it was an effort.

The evening started with some square dances which Heyes knew well from his youth out west. Beth had never square danced before. So her western friend guided her through the steps helpfully. It was a nice way to start, hand in hand. After a few dances they left the floor and he brought her a punch and one for himself. They stood and talked and caught their breath together in the balmy air as the sunlight faded and the gas lamps warmed up.

"I appreciate your taking time for this, Joshua," said Beth. "I know you're terribly busy this time of semester. The first semester is always the worst – there's so much to learn outside the classroom. And for you, with your extra – challenges – it's harder yet. I hear good things from my professor friends! I'm so proud and you should be, too!"

She made him feel so good, just when he was trying to get over the insecurity that had wracked him in and out of the classroom ever since he had been shot. He had started out with increased confidence, and now he felt ever better. Heyes smiled warmly at his friend and mentor, "Thanks, Beth! It is hard work, but I'm starting to feel like maybe I can do it. I never could have – without you." This felt so ironic to Heyes, who knew that he might be facing the end of his academic career even as it was just taking off. "But I haven't taken my . . . finals yet – those aren't until next week! Then we'll see how the . . . semester really went."

"You know you're ready. Just get enough rest and don't worry. I've been through finals many times – that's the secret. Don't try to do more than you can. But that's more than enough about school – that's what you're supposed to be getting away from!" Beth laughed. The band played a spirited polka as they talked. "How long has it been since you square-danced?" she asked.

"I hate to think – maybe ten – twelve years?" laughed Joshua. "And the gals I danced with in Wyoming weren't near as pretty as you." She laughed and thanked her partner. Joshua wondered why he had said that. For one thing, how on earth had he slipped and admitted to having spent years in Wyoming, notorious as home of the Devil's Hole Gang, when he could have claimed any part of the West for his past? Heyes asked himself if he might think of courting Beth. He hadn't used to think that she was pretty, but tonight, made up and in that low-cut dress, smiling and flushed with exertion, Beth did look pretty. When she was dressed for school, she wasn't trying to look appealing to a man; now she was trying, and she succeeded, at least with this man. She wasn't at all the type of the dance-hall girls Heyes had seen before, like Peggy and Alina. She was far above any of them. Why hadn't Joshua ever really noticed before?

The orchestra struck up another polka, a little slower than the last. Heyes and Beth danced it together, laughing together as they drifted to the edge of the dance floor. Then the orchestra played the first strains of a waltz. "Do you waltz?" asked Beth, suddenly sounding shy.

"Of course, we waltz out west. But not quite like you do here. Let's just watch this one. Then we'll try the next one, alright?" As the pair stood side by side, their hands nearly touching, Joshua found himself wondering what it would be like to waltz with Beth. How would it feel to have his hand on Beth's corseted waist, to hold her like the waltzing New York men were holding their partners, smoothly twirling over the floor under the trees? The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. And the more it scared him. Well, he was about to find out. Heyes had been a superb dancer – ten years before. He had had no trouble handling a polka – how would he do with the far more intimate waltz?

Then the first waltz was over and the couples were catching their breaths. The little orchestra delicately played the first notes of a tentative, reserved melody that seemed afraid to get started. Beth smiled with a little gleam in her eye. "Do you know this one?" Joshua shook his head, but seeing that Beth wanted to dance to it, and that it was another waltz, he led her onto the floor. Beth said "Oh, Joshua! You'll like this one - the _Beautiful Blue Danube_!" The melody gathered speed, hesitated, and then swept them away across the floor. The other couples seemed to melt away around them. All at once Heyes and Beth were gliding with Joshua's arm around her waist. Soon Heyes lost his self-consciousness and smiled into Beth's eyes. They were really a couple and they didn't want it to end. And then they couldn't wait for it to end.

As the last strains faded away, Joshua, his arm still around Beth, drew her off the dance floor and into a place where the trees blocked most of the gas lights and the branches grew low enough to provide a little privacy. He pulled his partner close and saw her look up at him with her eyes aglow with excitement – and invitation. Heyes leaned down and kissed her lips softly, a proper first kiss – not asking or assuming too much. Had he read her desires correctly? Her response told him that he had made no mistake. Heyes kissed Beth again, this time long and deep, with his hand running down her back where it was exposed by her low-cut dress.

Suddenly Joshua pulled away and turned his face from his dance partner, although her hand was still in his.

"Joshua, what's wrong?!" Beth was hurt and baffled.

"I'm sorry. You're too tempting! I shouldn't have done that! I'm so sorry!" He sounded distraught. He dropped her hand as if it had burned him.

"What are you sorry about? I've been wanting you to do that. I've been aching for you to do that- ever since the first day you came to the clinic and you blushed when you met me." Beth had to make Joshua understand that he hadn't offended her – until he pulled away.

Joshua turned half way back to Beth, his profile half hidden in the dappled shadows, His voice sounded startled, "Really? You liked me when I couldn't even talk? I heard the girls at the clinic teasing you one day about how you flirted with Dr. B. You never flirted with me that way." Joshua looked away again.

"Dr. B? Awful man! He's charming on the surface and he's fun to tease, but really I can't stand him. Of course I couldn't flirt with a student! That wouldn't be proper.

But I know the time you mean. You came into my office right after the girls had been teasing me. I was afraid you might have heard them. Silly Josh, the girls weren't talking about Dr. B – they were talking about you!"

Joshua was genuinely shocked, "Me?"

He remembered the overheard conversation vividly and could not imagine that what the women had said could ever apply to him. No one had ever called him a "beautiful young man" or anything remotely like it in his life. He also had a hard time understanding how anyone could see the Joshua Smith that he was in New York as so dangerous. By Hannibal Heyes' standards, Joshua Smith was a dull innocent. And how many people had seen him on his way to, or heaven forbid, coming from, the docks?

Beth chuckled, "Of course you! You should spend more time in front of a mirror. The girls knew – everyone knew – everyone but you, I guess – that I had a crush on you." Beth was puzzled and hurt to see that Joshua still wouldn't look at her. She had been so sure, for a moment there, in his arms as they kissed, that he returned her feelings. But now she didn't know what to think and her voice grew anxious. "But I don't understand. What's wrong? You wanted me to like you – that way – and I do. Have you changed your mind so quickly?"

"I – I shouldn't spend time with you. I sure shouldn't kiss you. It isn't right." Joshua looked pointedly down and away from Beth.

"Why on earth not?" Beth demanded, with her hands on her hips and anger rising in her voice. "I'm not your teacher any longer. We're both adults and there's nothing wrong with our stepping out together, if that's what we both want to do!"

Heyes spoke in a low, private voice, "Because – it's dangerous! I should have risked coming at all, but you looked so happy when I asked you . . . You don't know who I am. If you knew . . . what I did – what I was - before. . . " Heyes voice grew quicker and yet quieter, "It was selfish of me to ask you out. I'm sorry. I'll go away and I won't be back." Heyes started to walk away, but Beth grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the dark space under the trees.

"You will not! You'll stand right there and tell me what you're talking about, Joshua Smith!" Beth might be seven inches shorter than Joshua, but she asserted her authority as strongly as if he had still been her student.

"I – I can't. Not here." His voice fell to a whisper that no one but Beth could possibly hear. "Joshua Smith isn't even my real name. I've used it for so long, I almost forget myself sometimes." Beth looked into his brown eyes and saw no joking there, only a deep sadness.

"You're serious! Oh my God! You're serious!" Beth could hardly believe her ears. "No!" she cried as "Joshua" slipped from her grasp and vanished into the crowd. Beth ran after him, but she tripped and fell over her unaccustomed heels. She lurched to her feet and pursued Joshua again, pushing offended strangers away left and right to make a path. But it was no use. She couldn't find the man who had held her close just moments before. She was tempted to call after him, but it burned her heart like fire to realize that she didn't even know his real name. He hadn't trusted her with it. And now he was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

But if Heyes thought he could leave Beth behind that easily, he was very much mistaken. After all, she did know where he lived. It was deeply improper, at that time in that place, for a single woman to visit a single man in his room. Beth didn't care about her reputation, or at least, not more than she cared about this mysterious man. But she didn't chase him home the night of the dance in the park. She needed time to think - and to conduct some research.

The next morning Beth knocked on Dr. Leutze's office door early, before any patients had arrived. "Beth!" exclaimed the doctor as he opened the door and saw his colleague's face, "What's the matter?"

"Joshua Smith," murmured Beth under her breath so no one else could hear her, "Let me in and close the door!" The doctor's eyebrows rose skeptically as he gestured Beth in and invited her to take a seat.

When Beth was safely inside she told the doctor, "Joshua invited me to a dance last night, in Central Park. And he – well, he . . ." she was blushing and looking awkwardly away from the doctor.

"Did he make unwelcome advances to you, Beth?" the doctor sounded surprised and upset.

Beth blushed and looked down. She took a deep breath before speaking rapidly to Dr. Leutze in a low voice. "Advances, yes." she paused uncomfortably. "Unwelcome, no. You might say we advanced on each other! And then he pulled up short and said something about what he had done, what he had been, and why it was dangerous for me to be with him. He left very suddenly."

"What?! Had he been drinking?" The doctor exclaimed, yet it seemed to Beth that he was not really surprised and that the question about drink was asked only for the sake of form.

"No," answered Beth levelly and forcefully, "He had absolutely not been drinking. Well, no more than a glass of very weak punch. And he hadn't had anything before he arrived – I would swear to that. There was no alcohol on his breath – and I was close enough to know. But you already know that. What was he talking about, Doctor? You know. I'm sure you do."

The doctor spoke in a level voice, but with an edge to it that Beth, who knew him very well, could just detect. Beth suspected that her employer was extremely worried. "If he did not choose to tell you about his past himself, Beth, it is not my business to do so. I will, however, warn you of socializing with him further. His past was, well, not exactly refined. You know about his poker playing, his expert use of a knife and a gun."

"Of course, Doctor," Beth said, "but he is changing."

The doctor nodded. "He is trying to change. But that is harder than you may appreciate. His past Beth was, was also, well, violent. And do what he might, that violence may follow him. If he left you so quickly after you welcomed his advances, he may be afraid for you. I advise you to respect his feelings about that."

Beth looked very directly at the doctor. "And yet you brought him here to work with our staff, and be around our patients, in the first place. I submit that you know exactly who he is and why he is dangerous. Or why he is not. You care too much about your patients, and even staff, to put us all in unwarranted danger. You trust this man, despite what you know that you say you can't tell me."

The doctor nodded. "I confess that I do. But I could easily be wrong. If he feels that things are getting dangerous, he may very well be right. He knows his own business best. I cannot dictate your personal life, Beth. But I would very seriously recommend that you steer clear of Smith- all the more so if you care for him. God knows why he risked taking you to that dance – I can only guess that he wanted to see you before he leaves town. He evidently knew that he might have to leave suddenly. Perhaps permanently."

Beth's lips parted. She looked surprised, and hurt, and very worried. She said, with her mind obviously running ahead of her feet, "Thank you, Doctor, for the warning." She got up suddenly and left the office quickly, without saying another word.

Beth went to work with her students with a decided air of distraction. At noon, as she left her office for lunch, she saw Jim in the hall. He saw her and turned away, hurrying down the hall, pointedly avoiding Beth. She rushed after him. He stopped at the head of the stairs and turned to look at her, his battered young features full of worry. "Beth! What happened – with Joshua? What d-d-did you two . . .?"

Beth signed sadly. "I can't tell you that, Jim. If he wants to say something, that's up to him. But tell him – for me – to relax and just concentrate on his exams. Don't worry about me. I'm . . . fine. And I will leave him alone. Will you do that, please?"

Jim nodded silently. He didn't know what was going on and he was desperate to know. But Jim knew Beth well enough to know that she would never tell him. Discretion was her middle name as it had never been his.

Beth thought long and hard about what she had learned. Certainly her Joshua wasn't quite the same man she had thought he was, or maybe hoped he was. But after all the time Joshua Smith, or whoever he really was, had spent with Beth and all he had learned at the clinic and at Columbia University, he also wasn't quite the same man he had been before he had come to New York.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beth fretted all week, worrying so that even her newest students recognized her distraction. Finally, she could endure it no longer. Most of Joshua's exams would be over. Despite her promise to him, via Jim, on Saturday morning Beth went to Hester Street. She knew that at that hour on a Saturday most Hester Street folks, including Jim, would likely be at synagogue. Beth climbed the stairs to "the Smith Brothers'" place. She knocked on the door with her heart racing. A familiar voice asked who it was. Beth cried out, "It's Beth. I know I promised not to come, but I have to talk with you. Please don't turn me away. Let me in and tell what's going on. I have to know!"

There was a pause. Then at last there was a very reserved answer. "Alright," said the man whose real name she still didn't know. He opened the door and looked at her sadly, and warily. He was wearing dusty old black pants, a dirty white shirt with the sleeves turned up, and his suspenders were carelessly twisted. There were papers and books neatly stacked on the tiny desk by his bed and on the floor on either side. She had interrupted a very busy student in the midst of his studies. He still had two exams coming up the next week, Beth knew.

While she was still standing in the hall, he tried to warn her away. "Beth, you shouldn't come here. Hester Street is a dangerous place for a . . . gentile woman. You know that. You could get into trouble. You could get me into trouble. Women aren't allowed in men's rooms." Joshua looked deeply worried, but he wasn't seriously trying to get her to leave. He knew that he owed her an explanation and this was the safest place to give it, with Jim away and no one in the rooms nearby to overhear them.

"Oh, be serious. No one's going to throw you out and you know it! Women in men's rooms! That's mighty small compared to the wrongs you were implying you had done." She came through the door and closed it carefully behind her.

Beth spoke quietly but urgently, aware of the thin walls between this room and the ones around it. "How did you contrive to get shot in the head? What have you done that you don't want me to know about? You aren't some kind of . . . well . . . criminal, are you?" Beth demanded, half joking.

"Yes," he said, fixing her with a deadly serious look, "I am."

Her jaw dropped. Despite what Doctor Leutze had said, she did not want to believe it. But the look on Joshua's face left no doubt. A long, tense moment passed with their gazes locked, hers appalled, his fiercely defiant. But then his eyes dropped as shame crept into his face. At last he said, "Or I was. Until a bit over three years ago. You should leave."

"I'm not leaving until you tell me more. What kind of a criminal can you possibly be? You have to explain why you don't want to be with me. I care about you! I need to know! What kind of danger are you in?" she paused and waited for an answer and got none. "What's happened so you feel in so much more danger now?" Beth's spoke with some passion, but she was also wracked with fear. She still didn't know who this man really was. If Dr. Leutze had brought him to clinic he must be a decent man – mustn't he? What if the doctor didn't really know the truth about this dark western genius? There was a long, tense pause between them.

Finally Heyes started to talk to Beth, his voice blending bitter anger and sadness. "I'm wanted. You get that? There's a price on my head. A big price. You don't want to be with me. It's dangerous. Any time, someone could recognize me and turn me in. A . . . policeman spotted me out on Long Island – he's out there watching for me right now! I'm going to leave New York as soon as school is over. Maybe I shouldn't wait that long, but if nothing happens, I'm staying. But once I leave, I might not be able to come back. Ever. I hope I can, but I can't be sure. I can't put you, and the clinic, and Jim, all my friends, in danger.

We – my partner and I – we've been straight for more than three years. But I'm still wanted - dead or alive! You could be arrested, jailed – for aiding and abetting a fugitive from the law. You've got to get away from me! I care about you, too. When they take me down, I don't want you to go down with me. Can't you understand that?"

Beth was horrified, but her loyalty was unshaken. She reacted fiercely, "You aren't going to get taken down! You're too smart for that, and too careful. Who's going to look for the criminal background of a star college student under an assumed name? Just stay off Long Island! You're safe here. You can tell me. You have to know that I can watch my tongue – or do you just assume that all women chatter? But what on earth did you do? I can't believe that you're some kind of killer." Beth was getting a bit angry herself. Why wouldn't he trust her?

"You're right – I'm not killer. But there are plenty of other crimes with a high price on them. I've caused . . . damage . . . enough. And more than. You don't know what the price on my head is. If you knew . . . you'd. . . " The unnamed outlaw in suspenders shook his head sadly.

Beth interrupted him furiously, "You think I'd turn you in for money? I thought you were smart, but you don't know anything about women, or about me, if you think that!"

Heyes reacted with a weary calm, drawing one hand through his long, dark hair. This was way too familiar a scene for him. He was trying not to care too much before she made the inevitable withdrawal from his life when she learned more than she could deal with. "That's not what I mean. I mean the price is high enough that if anyone finds out, even . . . accidentally. Maybe you say something, without even knowing what it meant – or Jim could . . . He's a great guy, but he's so young . . ." Even then, they could hear someone coming up the stairs. It was the unmistakable light, rapid treat of Joshua's young roommate. And then they heard his key in the room's creaky lock. As Jim came in, Beth ran past him and vanished down the stairs.

"You t-two have a f-fight?" Jim asked, half concerned and half laughing at his roommate.

"Yeah, Jim. We had a fight. And it's none of your business. You got that?" Heyes sounded prickly, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. He didn't want Jim to have any suspicions about what had actually happened and why.

"T-teacher's p-pet!" Jim laughed, and started changing out of his good Saturday suit. Heyes hoped there would be no more awkward questions – at least from Jim – at least right now. Heyes went back to his school work, trying not to worry about when Beth would be back. But he knew she would be back.


End file.
